Flowers from God
A flourishing garden as an answer to prayer.
I’ve been in planes and airports for two days. I arrive home all jet-lagged and weary. That’s when I see it. An empty flower bed, lining my house – empty, that is, except for the weeds. All I can do is whisper a sad prayer to Jesus.
You see, I’d tried to plant seeds in March, like my husband plants peppers and tomatoes and pumpkins and even watermelon. I’d planted a package of flower seeds. A few had poked to the surface, then died. Then I’d planted spring bulbs. Our free-range chickens found them.
I grew up in a house full of vases, full of flowers, in a yard where roses climbed trellises; lilies and irises rose proud on slender necks; and tulips, daffodils, daisies and bluebells crowded together like a colourful dress. Mum spent hours with her trowel and spade, in a straw hat with a yellow ribbon, bowed low, praying, touching grass and soil. Flowers were friends to her introverted soul.
She’s gone now, walking and talking with the Gardener Himself and I’m here, with my dry, empty pots. But then, God fills them.
A straggly prayer
First, he prompts my friend to text me, just an hour after my sad prayer. She says she’d bought way too many flowers and could I use some? She gives me a tray spilling over, and it fills most of my pots and some of my flower bed.
Then a couple of days later, the same friend texts me, tells me plants are 50 percent off at the store, I should run and grab some. So I do. And my pots and bed get fuller.
The next day, I go to the store for cream, and I’m standing at the till when the manager says, “Take anything you want from the flowers and shrubs.”
I blink. “You might regret saying that,” I tell her. The bagboy says, “No, she’s serious. She wants it all gone.”
So my daughter and I grab flower after flower, and we go home and plant late into dusk. All my pots are now overflowing, and my flower bed too.
It’s Isaiah 51, the wilderness turned to Eden, sand being turned into land, into food, into flowers and farm. It’s what God does best.
For all my efforts, for all my planting seeds and bulbs, it was a single prayer – thin and straggly – that bore fruit. God was like an eager dad who ran the long road to grab hold of that sad prayer, then bring it home and water it. “Let there be flowers,” he no doubt said, and there were.
