Because of Jesus, there is beauty in my brokenness!
The last four months we have been doing a lot of gardening, and I have had a lot of practice using a hoe. If you’ve used one before, you know this is not a gentle tool. You’re usually using it to dig deep under the roots of something and then ripping it out so it stops taking nutrients from the things you’ve intentionally planted.
Sometimes when hoeing the garden, we were simply breaking the dirt up to be able to plant new things, which was easy. Other times we weren’t even planting anything new at the time, we were just asked to dig up all the weeds in the field. Some of those weeds were pretty huge with equally big roots.
This month in Guatemala, we were asked to dig up a big patch of grass so we could plant flowers in it. It didn’t seem like it would be that hard of a job but man I was wrong. I don’t know how long that grass had been there but holy smokes did it have deep roots! We had to use a hoe and a pickax to get 3+ inches into the soil to pull all the roots up. It was ridiculously strong and deeply rooted grass.
With all the manual labor we have had the past few months, I had a lot of time to think about the state of my own heart. Last month in Nicaragua I felt like a hoe or pickax was being taken to my heart and all these ugly useless weeds (like pride) were being uprooted from my heart because they are not of the Lord. It hurts to have things that have been there for so long ripped out, but they need to be taken out – with a sense of urgency as soon as they are recognized.
Why would I want ‘weeds’ taking time/energy/fuel that could go towards fruitful things that have been intentionally planted in my heart to look more like Jesus?
On the flip side of all of that hoeing to get rid of the weeds – I also noticed when we were uprooting that grass, that if you have deeply planted and secure roots in the Lord – it takes a heck of a lot of force to move you! I want those kind of roots!
Last month in Granada, Nicaragua we worked with REAP Granada – click here to check them out. This ministry is clearly guided by the Lord in every way. You don’t have to be there long to realize how much the Lord is moving through Scott, Jenn, Nathan, and the staff there. This group is Jesus with skin on to each and every person that comes across their path and it’s a refreshing ministry to work with. We got to help alongside them with prison ministry, children’s feeding programs they assist with that are run by locals, sports ministry, and we planted 600 lemon trees on their new property!
This month I am in Antigua, Guatemala and we are working with the AIM (Adventures in Missions) base here. We are staying with some long term missionaries here and doing all sorts of ministry. We have been chatting with people at a nursing home, doing home visits to pray with people, we went to this AMAZING place called Village of Hope (check them out here) – this is one of thee most incredible ministries I have seen in a long time. I know God is big, but WOW I was blown away at what the Lord has done with this ministry in just two shorts years. We have only been here a week and I love this place so much! Also, there is an active volcano you can see clearly from the backyard, the first night here it was spewing lava for a while! So sweet!! 🙂
thanks for catching up!
heather
Romans 5:3-5 “…we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
