New Beginnings: Growing despite the circumstances
God has a way of showing up and speaking truth if we pay attention and take the time to listen. While speaking at an event for women who lost children, I was listening to the next speaker. He experienced a loss of a child, and he used the phrase post traumatic growth. I have always heard the term post-traumatic stress, but not growth. Can we grow through what we go through? I believe yes!
While on a walk with a friend, I noticed these bulges in the asphalt, like something was trying to push through. I stopped bent over and as my brain was trying to reconcile why and how this was happening. I took several pictures. Delicate life was breaking through this hard asphalt. This should not be able to happen, yet before my eyes it was.
It is common to see weeds come up through cracks, but there is other plant life that grows out of the most astounding, weird, and hard places. God was connecting a truth in the dailiness of life.
How often do we recognize the hand of God? I was reminded of Isaiah 43:19 “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” In context, this verse is about the Israelites deliverance from Babylonian captivity. Isaiah wanted them to shift their focus and allow thoughts of deliverance to take hold of their minds.
Behold, pay attention because He is doing a new thing, something wonderful and unheard of. “Now it springs forth”, but it has been growing in the dark, hard places first. He is making a way where there seems to be no way. He “makes a way”, with direction and provision in those barren, unfruitful, dry seasons of the impossible and hopeless.
Despite the circumstances surrounding us we need to allow the Word of God to take root in the good soil of our heart. Being watered by the Holy Spirit, to gradually germinate and silently grow daily, at times unnoticed by many.
What astounds me is the tiny seed with not much water or sunlight coming through rises despite the weight of the soil or the hard surface above it.
Resilient means a person or an animal that can withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. God always finds a way, let’s not give up!
Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”