If you know me, then you know how I love to grow a garden; however in seeing my poor plot of land this year, you might think otherwise because my tiller has a sad tire and before last night, my garden remained untilled, unplanted, un-growing. Gardening is a skill my dad loved as well. Dad knew this skill, and for us, gardening was a family affair, one we each enjoyed each summer as our kitchen table revealed the fruit of our labors (aka all the many tasty vegetables).

Growing a garden requires certain qualities—Patience.  Patience.  Patience.  & More Patience.
A gardener turns the soil and patiently awaits for God to turn the weather warm, creating a perfect environment for small seeds to grow.
A gardener plants rows of seeds straight if at all possible, (unless you are like me because my husband teases me about how my curving rows seem to yield even more produce)  & patiently awaits for God to send the heat of the sunshine to cause that little seed to burst out of the darkness before the soil and begin to grow upward, poking its small, tender shoots through the soil.
A gardener gently applies a hoe to her garden, hoeing up the dirt around the plants that need more soil, patiently awaiting the gentle rain God will send to water the young, tender plants.
A gardener knows that her growing rows of plants needs some fertilizer to feed into the soil, and she also knows that her tiny plants can die so easily, even within the span of a single day if the fertilizer touches their gentle stalks, so a gardener applies a triple 10 fertilizer to the middle of the garden rows, careful to not allow any fertilizer to fall along the growing plants tender stalks, patiently awaiting God’s growth.

Truly, the skill of gardening needs a gardener to apply great patience if her plot of land is going to yield a summer crop.
Unfortunately, gardeners can do everything right throughout all the spring days and still not enjoy the fruit of our labor.
How…….We might ask?
Raccoons.  Sometimes, we act just like these masked bandits.
Those mask-wearing creatures watch over our gardens with due-diligence, and when the moment of ripeness arrives, the four-legged raccoons come during the night BEFORE the harvest and steal all the precious vegetables that we had hoped to harvest the very next morning. 
I truly think they are a most patient creature because they know exactly how long to wait before they begin their night of gathering.
A garden can look perfect, ready for harvest—tomorrow—and then a raccoon will send his family the raccoon signal, “Tonight.” A beautiful, lush garden can become a stripped, empty garden by the next morning. 

In life, we see opportunities when we could have (and should have) acted with patience, but when we instead reacted with lack of patience.
Prayer requires us to place our hope, our trust in God.

We ask…..patiently trusting that God will answer our requests within His perfect timing and in His perfect way.  We pray, fully trusting God, knowing that God will answer.

Christian artist Danny Gokey performs a beautiful melody “Haven’t Seen It Yet.”  Listen today if you have opportunity and join me in remembering that God is at work……..

• God is Hearing our prayers.
• God is Creating change.
• God is applying His powerful presence.
• God is changing lives.
• God is preparing for His harvest……..and
• We must remain faithful, patiently awaiting, and fully trusting God.

“Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the LORD comes who will bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of man’s hearts, and then each man’s praise will come to him from God”  (1 Corinthians 4: 5).
Believers must remain faithful gardeners.
We must remain “as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God”  (1 Corinthians 4:1).
We must remain patient, conscientious gardeners.
God’s Harvest will come…..God will “bring to light the things hidden in the darkness” (5).
Let us await the beautiful ripeness only God can bring.
Let us not come into the garden during the middle of the night only to steal away the joy found in awaiting the morning’s light. 
Let us pray…..trusting that God is at work in lives and in the hearts of those we are praying for……even when we cannot see “the things hidden in the darkness” hidden just below the soil’s surface (5).
Let us remember—-God sees what we can never see.
God sees the future harvest!!!!