I have just been out in the garden watering, my favourite evening chore as I get to enjoy the beauty of the fading light and the fresh smell of the garden. I also get to enjoy the delight of picking tomatoes and squash, savouring the exquisite flavour of cherry tomatoes that somehow end up in my mouth.
Sunflower hanging low
In some places the garden is overgrown, because I have been too busy with other priorities to pull weeds, but there is still a narrow path that I can tread, in fact all the more precious because it is narrow and overgrown. Some of that growth is low hanging fruit laden branches, sunflowers heavy with seed and tomatoes ripening all around.
God’s narrow path is a wide open way of blessing and joy, I thought. It is narrow because it is surrounded by amazing abundance, with fruit and luxuriant growth hanging down. It is only narrow and sometimes hard to find because it is filled with so much abundance.
Hydrangeas obscure the path
I couldn’t help but think of that as I trimmed away my sage bush on Saturday so that the mailman could get to the letter box. The fragrance of discarded branches clung to my clothes. I also thought of it as I surveyed my hydrangeas so laden with flowers that they obscure the path beside them. Those I did not touch. When I focused on the beauty of the flowers it didn’t seem to matter that the pathway had disappeared.
How often do we miss the abundance of God because we want to make the pathway wider and easier to follow I wondered? How often do we cut down the luxuriant growth and fruit that God is growing because we are obsessed with always seeing and knowing where the way leads? How often do we missed what God has blessed us with here and now in this moment because our vision is focused somewhere out ahead where the pathway is still obscured?
God may we look and see your abundance pressing in all around.
Rich fruit, luxuriant growth, laden branches hanging low.
May we remember that sometimes they obscure the path
that winds so narrow out before us.
May we remember that your provision is inexhaustible,
like a plate of food that will never be empty.
May we taste and see that all you give is good,
And raise our voices in praise and thanks and gratitude.