I haven’t even tidied this corner of the garden yet. With other projects demanding attention, I’m late with weeding and clean-up. And yet here they are, my faithful, happy harbingers of joy, unpainted fence and plastic detritus notwithstanding.
Leopard’s bane are called perennials because they come back again and again, year after year, without me having to do anything. They are also called “bane” because they were thought to be a threat to threats. Joy as a threat. I like that.
As I downloaded photos today I thought about faithfulness. Faithfulness is one of the attributes of God that he has been emphasizing to me when I ask the question, “Who do you want to show yourself to be for me in these current circumstances?”
It is easier to go through a crisis on your own than to see your children and grandchildren face challenges. We can read about God’s faithfulness, but when we experience God’s ways of bringing us to experiential knowledge of that faithfulness, our relationship with God deepens and becomes our own. My mother’s years of experiencing God’s keeping power through pain meant nothing to me until I heard him sing over me during long dark sleepless nights.
She had her relationship and I have mine. Now I am watching my children and grandchildren discover for themselves that he reveals who he wants to be for them. As I pray for them, I’m learning to stand in the gap without standing in the way.
God is good. Perennially. And not just for me.
Your faithfulness flows from one generation to the next;
all that you created sits firmly in place to testify of you.
Psalm 119:90 TPT