Where once there were thorns, cypress trees will grow. Where nettles grew, myrtles will sprout up. These events will bring great honor to the LORD’s name; they will be an everlasting sign of his power and love.” Isaiah 55:13 (New Living Translation)
Finally, the spring flowers are in planters on my porch! You can go ahead and check the date, but you’ll find that it most certainly is no longer spring, but mid-July. No judging here! What happened to the time? We’re getting ready to start school back up, but I’m just planting my wave petunias. I may have even suggested to my hubby that I might as well wait and get mums instead.
The planters that I have on my porch I got a couple years ago, and I love to see them bringing cheer to the house. The thing is, the planters are just plain, plastic boxes that aren’t all that pretty. They’re really just the shells to the wonderful, live plants that grow from the inside. It’s awesome to see the plants overflow and grow abundantly from those planters.
During the winter, we planted ground pine in the planters and placed pinecones between the pretty greens. It was great! The ground pine started to yellow and looked not so fresh anymore in the early spring, so we pulled those out to prepare for our spring flowers. Except the spring flowers never came!
Do you think the planters stayed empty when they weren’t being filled with something pleasing to the eye? Nope! I was growing weeds. The planters looked horrible and neglected. They apparently decided to fill themselves up when I wasn’t doing the job for them.
Well, the flowers are now in and growing beautifully. They bring a smile to my face to see the improvement from weeds to flowers. Also, the great part is that they’ll get bigger and get even more blooms on them as they are tended to!
I realized that it’s easy for us to all go through a season of not producing anything beautiful, just like my planters. It really becomes dangerous when we get it in our head to just wait a while longer before doing anything about it. Can you imagine what those weeds would’ve looked like if I waited to plant mums? Would I have put that off too?
Remember that we’re just a shell on the outside like those planters. The growth that spills out to make us beautiful and bring smiles is what is planted and nurtured on the inside. When we let our insides go empty for a while, we tend to grow some weeds.
Make sure to fill your planters with God’s things before Satan’s weeds start growing without you meaning for them to. Start by clearing out the weeds and begin planting new life to let his power and love overflow!
