spring planting

warning to readers:

i'm really not sure where this post is gonna go, so i apologize beforehand for the rambling.

i've been fairly obsessed with planting lately. y'all know this about me, it happens every spring. i cannot explain the joy i get out of putting something in the dirt and watching growth happens. it's pure and lovely to me.









last night, my fairly superficial vision of growth and planting took a strange turn. it turns out that 3 of the women in my bible group (women whom i have grown to love) are going through extremely difficult, and somewhat sudden, circumstances.



we prayed and prayed, and God has continued that action in me this morning. these are not fearful prayers, but prayers to the One i trust the most with such things. He is the One who must rescue, this i know.


and yet, i wonder. i wonder about such things, and the turmoil of this life. i turned to the Word, and God gave me these verses:



What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

that's from 1 Corinthians: 15: 35-44.


i did a little deeper digging, and found these explanatory words about this passage:


Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15:35-58 to teach the Corinthian church that the Resurrection gives us victory over loss, victory in this day, victory in the last day, victory over death, and victory in life. Paul launches into the mechanics of resurrection, how it works, and he begins with two illustrations The first one is a seed, and he says that it must be sown as a seed and die, and when it sprouts God gives it the body he intends for it.


and somewhere in here, i think, is the truth God wants me to hold today; that what we sow here on earth is important, the seed, but that it is NOTHING unless God 'sprouts' it and gives it the true identity He meant for it to have.

all the things we 'sow' that sprout into nothing make sense to me with this passage. and all that we 'sow' out of weakness and flaws and brokenness can be resurrected to glorious things because God made them to be, because He raised them from the ground.


oh, God, how thankful i am for the resurrection. You are our hope, Lord, for your resurrection assures us that our spiritual bodies are secure, even when our worldly ones are not. thank you for that today, and every day.

amen.