"Let your roots grow..." Devotion by Allie Boss
Written by Allie Boss of @alliemboss, author of The Boss Farmhouse Blog
Gardening. It has become a huge passion of mine over the last handful of years. Specifically growing a cut flower garden, but I love growing all things. Flowers, veggies, fruit. It is my happy place.
I have found so much joy and peace walking out in the mornings with the warm summer sunshine on my face, coffee in one hand, and a basket to collect my harvest in the other. Just writing that out has me giddy for long summer days in my garden.
One of my very favorite things is making bouquets of flowers and giving them to my friends and family. There is so much joy in sharing the beauty of my hard work with them. What they see is a beautiful bouquet of blooms, what I see is a labor of love and a lot of hard work to get to that point.
Gardening has taught me a lot of lessons. If you have ever grown anything from a seed, then you know everything that goes into it. Planting, watering, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, weeding…. And repeat for weeks, sometimes months. Sometimes things fail and don’t come out quite like we hope. Sometimes pests come to kill things, the bunnies or deer get it, or we forget to water things for too long and they start to die. The weather, the amount of sunlight, where it’s planted, and other outside elements always affect your garden. A well-tended garden takes daily care to reap a bountiful harvest no matter the conditions. I can tell when I’ve slacked off and not tended my garden for days or weeks. The weeds come back, they look thirsty, and they are in desperate need of attention.
“Let your roots grow down into him and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will be strong in the truth you were taught and you will overflow with thankfulness.” Colossians 2:7
It takes courage to plant that seed, knowing the care it’s going to need to bring you a harvest. Just like your faith in God. There have been seasons in my life where my faith is so strong nothing will destroy it, and there have been seasons when it looked like the first year of my garden. Forgetting to water and tend to it daily. It looked sad, thirsty, filled with weeds, and quite frankly, a lot of outside elements destroyed it.
Last year after my cut flower garden was well established, we got the heaviest downpour one night. When I went out in the morning my huge row of thousands of cosmos were laying down flat. The rain had crushed them. But since they were well established, they survived. They kept growing, they kept blooming, and they survived the storm. They grew a little funny from then on, but they survived. The storm might have left an imprint on them forever, but their foundation remained strong. They still made beautiful bouquets. If that had happened when they were just small sprouts, they would have been wiped out. They would not have survived the storm. But their roots were deep in the ground and their foundation was strong; they continued to bloom the full season.
It reminds me of my own faith. I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older, more and more storms come. Life is filled with disappointments, hardships, tragedy, and much more. But when our foundation is solid, our roots are deep and we tend to our relationship with the Lord daily, no storm is too big to destroy us. They may leave a mark, but it won’t break us. When I’m not in my Bible daily, when I’m not spending time in prayer, I feel it. Life seems to knock me down way easier. I feel more stressed, anxious, frustrated, annoyed. But when I’m taking the time to get into my Bible, when I’m praying and working on my relationship daily, I feel so much peace, contentment, joy, and happiness. Only those feelings come from God.
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds their house on solid rock.” Matthew 7:24
It’s not always easy. It’s a daily effort to grow our relationship with the Lord. But when I look at the flowers I plant, I can’t help but truly be in awe of our magnificent creator. Have you ever just sat and looked at a flower? There are thousands of details, the colors are so vibrant, the smell is incredible and they just remind me that if God put this much time into the tiniest details of a flower, imagine how much detail he put into you, his precious child.
“If God gives that much attention to the wildflowers, most of them never seen, don’t you think he will attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you?” Luke 12:28
God cares so much for you. He wants a relationship with you. You are never too far gone for him. You are never too broken for him to fix. You are not too far for him to reach. You are never too old to build a relationship with him.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9
Building that solid foundation takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes tending and watering that relationship with the Lord daily. It takes weeding out a lot of things in life. It takes shielding our hearts from outside elements. When we water our seeds of faith well, when we give it proper care, our roots in God will grow deep and strong and we will truly reap a beautiful harvest in our lives. And when we fail...and we will because we are human, he’s right there waiting for us with open arms. It’s never too late to build a solid foundation for your life in Christ. Plant that seed, water it, weed it, and tend to it daily. Your roots will become solid and your harvest in life will be abundant and beautiful.
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soils was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no roots. Other seeds fell among thorns, which grew up and chocked the plants so they did not bear grains. Still other seeds fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced crop, multiplying thirty, sixty or even a hundred times.”
Mark 4:3-8
