Life

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I believe it.
Since I drowned my camera (accidentally of course!) I have to do without the picture and try to find some words.
I have been enjoying starting some seeds inside to get a head start in the garden. My girls (especially Damaris) are very into the whole process and very regularly they can be seen checking to see if anything more is up, or misting the tender little plants. Damaris even dreamt the other night that more of her seeds were up, and indeed by the following evening, there were more.
Watching all these things sprout has gotten me pondering the circle of life. George MacDonald says you should teach your children that they are a soul, and they have a body. When death happens, it happens to your body, not you.
Looking at what is left of a seed after it is buried and dies, observing how it comes to life, is quite something. I highly recommend it!
Especially big seeds, like pumpkin and squash, make it very obvious and remarkable! Here are a few of my observations... loud messages of hope and life in tiny packages.
As life pushes out of the seed, it erupts the soil around it, it is literally earth-moving, earth-shaking! The plant is being birthed. It is already putting out roots before it comes out of the soil, before anything shows. (Essential) Most of them come up with their "heads" bowed. The leaves are still pinched inside the husk, the shell, that once held the life. (Dormant) As life keeps pushing, insisting, the shell gives way even more and finally falls, it's purpose complete, back to the soil. Those two leaves that were pinched together begin to open, unfurl. They look like a prayer, a giving back, worship.
He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly! May Your life burst forth, no matter how it disrupts me! I want to submit to necesary death in order to know the wonder of abundant life! Break me, Lord, until I am wholly Yours! Then I will be who You created me to be.
Live loved!
Janelle