When I garden, I plan, plant, nurture and wait. In the waiting, I’m hoping soon to see blossoms on my plants. The blossom is the promise of fruit or flower in the days to come. There’s a tension in that waiting, when I’m hoping that my time in the dirt has paid off, that I’ll see my reward for my hard work.
In Luke 15, we read the parable of the prodigal son. The intensity of waiting is masterfully portrayed in the loving father. After the son demands his inheritance and the father gives him his inheritance, the son leaves home. We are not sure how long the son is gone, but it’s long enough for a famine to inhabit the land where the son is living. We are not told how long it is from the time the son spends all his money and is living among the pigs to when he “came to himself,”(Luke 15:16,17) and ventures homeward to his father who sees him coming from a long way off. What happened between verses 16 and 17? Sometimes, dear friend, we want Scripture to speak where it is silent. I call it the “space between.”
Like the space between my planting and seeing the blossom, or promise of fruit, we may be waiting on God to answer the cries of our hearts: to see fulfilled our hope of years of prayers. In that tension, that “space between,” God invites us to lean into Him even more and trust He’s at work in ways we cannot yet see.
We all need gospel hope in times of waiting, don’t we? We need to know we are heard and that our cares matter. Sweet friend, your cares do matter. More importantly, YOU matter. We can wait expectantly, like the prodigal son’s father, knowing that God loves us and carries us through all the waiting we are going through. He’s in the middle of our messes.
In the garden, when my hands are deep in the dirt, I sense the Lord reminding me, no matter my mess, no matter how I’ve dug myself into a deep hole, no matter my sin struggles, no matter my heartache, He is the hope my heart truly longs for and needs.
I’ve often wondered how the prodigal son’s father endured waiting for his son to return. I believe it was one moment at a time of desperately trusting the Lord.
Sweet friend, it’s the same for us. The blossom will come. God will carry us when we have run out of answers, we are at the end of our waiting and when no one knows the depth of our pain. More than I could ever care for my plants to ensure the blossoms’ appearance, God gives us His hope in our seasons of waiting.
He is the Master Gardener, and we can trust Him.
