Finding the path to spiritual renewal through my reading glasses
It’s October in Hawaii, still warm, but I was not counting on fresh veggies.
I recognized the varied edges of the little leaves and their unique smell just before I plucked them from my mostly empty vegetable garden. Among the bark I had laid so the soil could rest for winter, were sprouts, distinctly tomato.
From seeds dropped to the earth during the spring harvest had come brand new shoots. A few days later there were more. They had waited out the blazing summer months to emerge in the cooler rains of fall.
Suddenly it was tomato season again, and I had nothing to do it with it. In fact, my best gardening has happened despite me.
This burgeoning little garden mirrored the word ringing in my ears for weeks: renewal.
It can be hard to believe in renewal in a dry, crusty season of life. Living in body that doesn't defy gravity, in a world that thrives on chaos. And yet that is God's nature and his promise to us.
What looks like dried up and worn out in our lives is just a new season in the making.
The seeds for next spring’s garden are always in the ground long before we see the fruit on the limb. They are germinating sight unseen. Likewise, we are full of promise waiting to be fulfilled.
Is there any part of your life that feels dried up? Too far gone? Weary beyond belief?
Even as we toil in relationships that feel strained.
As we wait for things long prayed for.
As we spend long hours parenting, not sure our best efforts are enough.
As we wrestle with our fragility and personal weaknesses.
As we struggle with our mental or physical health.
God is wanting to restore us and make us new.
It’s a mysterious thing. Intangible. In a world where everything degrades, where my fridge must be replaced, and my car rusts out from salty air.
We serve a God who is not impacted by outside forces or the efforts of our own shaky hands. He doesn’t bow to social pressures or diseases. He created all things.
Renewal is his nature and his promise to us.
God sees well beyond our hardship and into our future.
Now physically, there is something altogether different happening at my home. During the pandemic I took hold of some reading glasses, or maybe they took hold of me. They are my constant companion, along with a tube of fancy under eye cream that I have no illusions will do anything for me.
I am wasting away day by day. It’s not sad but a fact of life. We are served constant reminders that life is fading, short. No wonder it is so hard to see the miraculous, the new life. We need new eyes to see.
We are in a battle inside our minds to put our trust in either what we experience all around us (the dying off) or what God sees (the restoration He has for us). It is a bold act to deny yourself the obvious and accept what God has said is true instead. It does not mean living in fairy land. It does not mean denying your feelings in the moment or the human processes you must endure, but to deny their power over you for good. It means trusting that whatever death is in front of you, life is surely on the way.
We make space for renewal when we activate our faith.
Renewal comes step at a time, day at a time. Although spiritual renewal is miraculous, it responds to our choices.
What does faith for renewal look like? Instead of despairing over the difficult, we continue to water what is good, continue to be faithful in the little. We wait expectingly.
If you feel weary, challenged, broken even, these are words of life from God written just for you, for a time such as this.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV)
The pathways to renewal are found in scripture.
Dedicate your brain space to what is good and true, the unseen things of God that will last forever. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)
Be humble enough to repent regularly. (Acts 3:19-21)
Keep your heart soft and open to God’s ways, putting aside ways of being that are not like His. (Ephesians 4: 17-24, Psalm 51:10-12)
Actively press into knowing Him and allowing him a place of lordship in your life. (Hosea 6:1-3, Psalm 23: 1-6)
Be willing to keep the past in the past and move forward into new things even when (Isa 43:18-19)
Continue to discern, test what is God’s best in each season so that you can follow well. The ways He wants to work in your life will have different expressions in each season. Be pliable so that you can move with Him. (Romans 12:2)
As we pursue Him, he remakes us. He takes the old baggage, lightens our load, and makes us more like Him in the process. What a wonderful exchange.
I pray that you stumble upon some unexpected growth, even the tiniest of seedlings sprouting amongst the dry places, and know that a good God has good plans for you.