Growing With the Help of the Great GardenerSample

Losing the Battle

The caterpillar game of hide and seek continued, but I was winning as some small cucumbers did manage to start growing from the flowers.

But would you believe there was another plague yet to come!? It was the slugs. I mean they aren’t the fastest-moving creatures, so they were a bit late to the party, but they sure had an appetite! They dug right into my precious cukes.

So I put my thinking cap on and remembered that slugs don’t like salt. SIMPLE! So I sprinkled salt on and around all my precious plants making a moat of white that they would NOT want to cross. The next morning, I went out to check on them to promptly discover that my vines were pretty much all wilted and dead!!

Why, you ask? Well, some brainy giant had come and put salt all over and around them which worked fine to ward off the slugs…but it also killed the plants! I was pretty devastated, to be honest.

After all my persistent fighting, in the end, it was me who killed the plants. De-va-sta-ted.

John Ortberg said in his book, The Me I Want to Be, that ‘’God isn’t at work producing the circumstances you want. God is at work in bad circumstances producing the you he wants.’’

Yes, well thanks for that insight, John! But in the end, there is something to be said about how we react when things aren’t going to plan and we are sick of going through that. Do we blame God? Do we turn to God? Do we forget God altogether? Do we give up?

What if we flip those questions? If things aren’t going right, does God blame us? No. Does God turn to us to fix our own problems? No. Does God forget us? No. Does God give up on us? Certainly not.

If we are going to try and live our lives and reflect God’s character even in tough times, remember that He will not leave you or forsake you. So let’s run to Him because He is waiting with open arms!

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for helping to grow and change me to be the best reflection of you I can be.

Please remind me to turn to you first and that even though things are hard, I can always rely on you.

Thank you for being with me in the trials of life.

Amen.