i yield....

well...its late tuesday and the last lesson of the afternoon...i'm all but beaming from ear to ear. my mind races with all that God is trying to teach me. a seemingly uneventful day has found me etching words across a page, drinking tea in this scorching heat, listening to the whistling breeze but unable to feel its cool whisper on my neck...

all i can smell is lavender. they've recently been tearing (and i mean tearing) all alien plants out of our school gardens (now indigenous-plant-only zones) and all members of our biology department had to rush to the side of the ailing lavender plantation lying limp in the pathway, before a hundred plus bustling girls trod the life out of them. my car boot (trunk for american friends) is bursting with evidence of the rescue. whether they can be saved or not will have to be seen.

what a picture of our lives i suddenly thought as i packed the last fading branch in. God knows whats best for us doesn't He. He is the great designer. The master craftsmen. The Gardener. He weaves together the complex tapestry of our marked days on this earth and looks at the full picture from His throne. All that He does is good. sometimes sin like the alien plants creep into our lives. The gardener did not put it there. Like a threatening weed it saps the life from every plant that belongs in the garden. it starts to destroy everything that the Gardener has so tenderly nurtured. The newly developed shoots whither first, then in time even the well- established ones are suffocated by this growing abomination. Oh how the Gardener's heart must bleed at the sight of it. The Garden is hardly even recognisable to him. But still He toils to save it. Night and day He works. He never sleeps. He does what ever He must to save His beloved creation. He is determined to see the work He began to completion.

It's funny how the passer-by doesn't see anything wrong at all with the garden. The alien plants are not always hideously ugly. Sometimes, like the lavender, they have a beautiful fragrance and people all around think it would even be nice to plant them in the garden. They look at the outward appearances. But the Gardener looks deeper. He sees what the alien plants (and what sin) will do to the garden (God's creation). And so the time comes where He must take drastic measures. With loving hands the Gardener must remove every plant that does not belong in His creation. Sometimes they are not well-rooted and the garden will be unnaffected by this removal. But sometimes the roots of the alien plants, like our sin, run so deep that the garden grieves to loose them. the garden has become so dependant on the very thing that seeks to destroy it, that it will not give it up easily- not even to the hands of the Gardener Himself.The garden rejects the Gardener!

to think of the many times i have found myself in this very place. so many times things crowd my life that have no place there. they steal my time and energy, and they sap the life from me- diminishing my usefulness to God. Man looks at my outward appearance and sees someone who appears to have a close relationship with the Lord. but only God sees my heart and knows the many sins that lie beneath the surface. only He knows about the many things that i have allowed to creep in and choke the life from the seeds of righteousness He has planted. drastic measures must be taken if i am to ever return to my first love- to my God, my kinsmen redeemer. sometimes I must be brought to the place where i yield such things to the Lord and confess it as sin before Him and sadly, because of my own pride and arrogance, sometimes the God who loves me enough to lay down His life for me- who calls me His daughter- must pry such things out of my clutching hands. it saddens me to recall how many times things have had to be pried from my grasp. How highly i must view myself. How many times i must have hurt my God.

How deep the Fathers love for us-I say again- How vast beyond all measure!

1 John 3:1 "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!"

Ever thought about how much God must love you? Ever marveled at His patience ,forgiveness, tenderness and unfailing ability to take us back into His arms time and time again? today i can say, i have.