Living
on a ridge in Tennessee, the soil is frankly abysmal. Included in my collection
of yard-digging tools are a pick-ax, mattock, and posthole diggers, along with
my beveled and squared shovels, of course. I have a love/hate relationship with
these particular items; I will confess.
Far
too often in housing construction, once a contractor removes the existing top
soil for building a house, the excavated poor soil is usually spread back all
over the yard including the rocks rather than replacing them with good topsoil.
Then sod is placed over the lousy dirt and rocks to cover it all up! I have
discovered that digging holes in our yard can be quite challenging at times.
I
had planted a “dynamite crape myrtle” (Lagerstromia indica ‘Whit II’) two
years ago. The first year was a spectacular showstopper as a young tree six
foot in height! This year there were no blooms, reminding me that I had
forgotten to fertilize it. Even my mother texted me and requested a photo of
the dynamite crape myrtle. I confessed to my error, and she was irritated that
those who sold me the tree didn’t tell me it needed to be fertilized! I let it
go, thinking, “Yeah, it’s the other guy’s fault!” My thinking didn’t fly with my
spouse.
Anyway,
Beverly started pouring some “Miracle-Gro” on it to see what that would do, if
anything, late in the season. Recently, she happened to see some flowers
budding on it in mid-September. Crapes usually start blooming around mid-May to mid-June and last through the summer months, and some varieties of
crape myrtles will bloom until the first frost.
Given
the poor condition of the soil and lack of nutrients, it is amazing that it is
even blooming at all. When Beverly pointed out with excitement that our
dynamite crape myrtle was blooming, I had to quote James Carter Walker
portraying the character, JJ Evans, in the 70’s sitcom, Good Times, “Dy-no-mite!”
I
told Beverly as she was pouring more Miracle-Gro around the base of the myrtle
that this illustrated to me the value of drinking from the Word of God. It
causes us to bloom for His glory even in adverse conditions; she agreed. Similarly,
as the myrtle responded to the Miracle-Gro, our inner man reacts to the water
of life. Unlike the physical nature of the crape myrtle, however, there is a
choice factor in what we consume for our spiritual health. Obviously, our response
cannot be passive like the myrtle.
In
order to “blossom” for the glory of God in what He has done for us in salvation
(or being justified by faith) and progressive sanctification (or growing in
faith), we must ingest the vital spiritual nutrients of the Word daily while living
on terra firma due to the spiritual hostility and spiritual sparsity of our
planet and choose to make it our rule of life.
As
I see it, we can choose as believers in Jesus Christ to wilt spiritually and
blame it all on our environment with a victim mentality, or we can drink from
the water of life and thrive and bloom vigorously for His glory in a spiritual
desert with a we
are more than conquerors through Him who loved us mindset.
What
a powerful statement to the world we make when God is at work in our lives through
the Word! Drink my friends! Drink as much as you can from the Word of life and intentionally bloom like there is no tomorrow for His glory!
That
your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Cor 2:5; cf. 2 Tim
3:16-17; Heb 4:12).
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