I realize nature does not stress to grow!

[Ref. journal #19]

So much of the time we miss the natural order of things by pushing willfully to make our own plans work!

We miss not joining in this natural order if we don’t stop from time to time to listen to what it is saying to us. In Science and Health on p240 we read in a wonderful passage about this.

“Suns and planets teach grand lessons. The stars make night beautiful, and the leaflet turns naturally towards the light.”

In gardening, yesterday, I realised I had let some lusciously green leaved corms droop through not having planted them straight away though I had been given them sometime before. I had to cut the withered leave back to one inch of the corm. I berated myself as I often do when gardening! But then I stopped and thought why am I killing my own spirit about this? The corms don’t mind and will resuscitate soon enough. I might have missed them flowering this season so my lack of hurry suits them too!

There is a natural rhythm and while I am praying I can be a part of it aligning myself to God and not to the material picture of the results of a season missed. In the grand scheme of things it has no import to my aerial garden [100 ft off the ground]. I should be so glad to have been given these herbaceous plants and I can enjoy this scene of things “that everything happens in God’s own time".

In a poem about an Oak she also writes:

“Faithful and patient be my life as thine;
As strong to wrestle with the storms of time;
As deeply rooted in a soil of love;
As grandly rising to the heavens above.”

Gardening more importantly teaches patience with ourselves. There seems to be so much to do and organise and the smaller it is the more patience is needed. But we need to be like the oak rooted and dealing with the soil of Love. So while I go round buying bags of compost I can treat it as carrying Love for the lovely smelling herbaceous border I am creating. [see the work in progress on our balcony]. And i know that whatever work I am doing whether it is for teaching Sunday School or for my patients it will result in flowers the same as the lovely potted plants!  It’s the Christly touch I am learning!

as we sing in Hymn 423.

Give me, O Lord, a gentle, loving heart,
That I may learn to be more tender, kind,
And with Thy healing touch, each wound and smart.
With Christly bands of Love and Truth to bind.

It’s not the organising but the spirit of the organising that is so fundamental. We need to appreciate ourselves to engage with reality! That is what is called a firm mental foundation!