Deadheading

The profusion of blooms on the rose bushes is enhanced by frequent deadheading. I’m not sure why, but I believe it is because the plant then wastes no energy in trying to ‘service’ a bloom which has died, and can invest that energy into creating new and beautiful blooms.

The application of that to life, to my life anyway, is obvious. Unhelpful experiences from the past can be like dead heads, robbing me of vitality and growth. Guilty secrets can drain the colour out of life.  

God says ‘I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.’ Isaiah 43. If God is able to forget our guilty secrets, shouldn’t we give ourselves a break and forgive ourselves?

So in order to flourish and blossom and bloom lavishly in life, we need to deadhead the regrets and the mistakes and the sins, throw them all onto Jesus because he bore them all for us on the cross.

Then, for a rose bush to be profuse, it needs to be fed and watered regularly. Reading God’s word and hearing his voice speaking into our own situations is food and water to the soul.

Adverse Circumstances

If I’ve learned anything through the years of my life, it is that I don’t know nearly as much as I think I do. School years measure academic knowledge, and if you put in the study you come out thinking you are pretty smart.

Until you move out into the world, and on into life. Competing voices vie for your attention, promoting their values, lifestyles and dogma. Some don’t appeal, ever, but others you might entertain briefly, or for a lengthier space of time. Or even for the rest of your life.

Much of life is one foot in front of the other, day after day. Routine. But sometimes other things interfere which cause us to pause and consider. Often those other things are not nice in themselves.

I know someone at the moment who is struggling at work, not being given good clear instructions but then being criticised when things are not done as expected. She is facing this situation as an opportunity to grow, and refuses to walk away. 

I know there are thousands at the moment flooded out in England. Day after soggy day the rains  come down and the floods rise up until they engulf the gardens and invade the kitchens. And still the forecasters predict more wet weather. Is this a time for some of those thousands, if not all, to reconsider values and aims, goals and meanings? 

I have had some routine hospital appointments this morning, always sobering as you rub shoulders with the chronically, long-term sufferers. Will my back ache ever ease? Or is this a time for me to reassess priorities and drop deeper into God to draw on his resources more fully?

Little Samuel was sleeping in the Temple when he was awoken three times in one night by a voice calling his name. Finally he was given advice from Eli, the priest, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’. 

Samuel took Eli’s advice, and God shared a couple of secrets with him. 

One can’t  measure life experience like one can measure academic knowledge. And we never reach the end of the textbook until we end the final chapter of our lives.

Today I want to be open to hearing God’s secrets, if he wants to share them with me. I want to be open to new growth opportunities. And I look forward to the time when I am eager for things without having been prompted to want them, through adverse circumstances.