How big is your compost pile?

As we finished our walk around the neighborhood last Saturday, enjoying the return of sunshine and warmer temperatures, I told my husband I was going to take a picture of the compost pile.

“Why do you want a picture of that?!”

     “I may use it on my blog.”

“Oh, OK…hmmm…[shrug of shoulders]”

My husband isn’t really into the blogging thing, but he’s very patient with me when I ‘stop everything’ to capture an image with the camera…and very generous about the time I spend with my photos and blog on the computer. 

OK…back to the subject at hand…

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compost
n.
Decayed organic matter that can be used as a fertilizer or soil enrichment.
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My previous post involved plants that were frozen in last week’s winter blast and are headed for the compost pile.  It may be easier to follow what I’m saying today if you go back first and read my previous post (click below):

“To Everything There’s a Season”

At the end of that post, I mentioned those of you who feel you are in a prolonged winter season – and who feel that springtime and new life will never come again for you.  Instead of seeing beauty and fruitfulness in your life, all you see around you is a bleak, hopeless, and desolate situation.

 

I have been through seasons like this, admittedly not to the degree some of you have, but enough to know that we must search for the sunshine and deliberately work to overcome what the secular world would consider a hopeless situation.

No longer will you need the sun to shine by day,
nor the moon to give its light by night,
for the Lord your God will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory…
Your days of mourning will come to an end.
Isaiah 16:19-20

This is an ongoing process that requires persistent trips to the compost pile, as more and more of what seems good and beneficial in our lives falls apart and fades into nothingness.  We must keep remembering:

…that God causes everything to work together
for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.  
Romans 8:28

One of our daughter’s favorite sayings is, “The grass isn’t greener on the other side; the grass is greener where you water and fertilize it.”

No one can have green grass without tending their lawn…and no one can have good luck with their flower garden 100% of the time.  I’d be willing to bet that some people with the most beautiful flowers also have some of the largest compost piles!  They leave in their garden only the plants that thrive and make the garden a better place…and that develop into the beautiful design the Creator had in mind for them all along.

They don’t sit and brood over the pitiful plants that failed to develop properly.  Those disasters go back to the compost pile to be broken down into nutrients that will provide new life for other plants to grow in the future.

Isn’t it the same with our lives?  If we sit and brood over our mistakes and failures…and the negative experiences that are out of our control…they will hold us back from becoming what God intends for us to be.   Sometimes, if we focus on them too long, they can even turn us against God Himself.  If we refuse to obsess over them or let these problems be our main focus, then the lessons we learn from them will help us to grow and develop into the people God wants us to be.  By clinging to our problems, we cannot solve them under our own power.  It’s only when we turn them over to God and allow Him to work out His purposes, that we can be restored (just as we can’t bring back life back to dead plants, but God can break them down and transform them into something beautiful once again).  

How big is YOUR compost pile?  Is there any debris you need to add to it – in order to make the best of your present situation – and to prepare nourishment for your future life?

The most beautiful flowers in our neighborhood belong to a husband and wife going through very tough times.

However, their faith is alive and their witness for Christ is strong because they deliberately and continually place their troubles on the compost pile.  Visitors to our street, upon seeing the beautiful flowers, probably think the people who live there are a happily retired couple who have hours and hours of free time to work in their flower beds.  Those of us who are their neighbors know that the beauty in their lives comes out of the new growth nurtured and fertilized from their past illnesses, hurts, tragedies, and struggles.

More importantly, God sees the beauty in their lives and promises to share with them His eternal blessings!!

This has been a rather long post; I promise some shorter ones after this(!)  Meanwhile, we all have to keep weeding, watering, and fertilizing to bring about new growth in our lives…and don’t forget that some of the best fertilizer for our future life will come from the compost pile of our present and past experiences.

He has made everything beautiful in it’s time.
Ecclesiastes 3:1

…everything, including what’s in the compost pile!

Hope y’all have a good week, with at least a little sunshine in between the winter storm clouds…
…and remember that the beauty of springtime isn’t far away! 

To everything there’s a season…

To everything there is a season,
      A time for every purpose under heaven
Ecclesiastes 3:1

Our winter season is not as frigid as winter is in many parts of the country.  Here are some begonias as they appeared under the shelter of our back porch a couple of weeks ago.  Surprisingly, they had survived dips into the twenties on chilly nights.

 
After one night of 18-degree weather, this is what we found on our back porch the next morning!  The little pot at upper left is the down-under pot (flipped over since the plants were growing out of the bottom).  We had moved it from out in the yard and placed it in the shelter of the porch to see if it would survive the winter.

This was the begonia pot on our front porch a couple of weeks ago — you may remember it’s where the little wrens nested during the summer.
 

This is the same pot, after the night of the 18-degree low temperature.
 

We have seasons in our lives, just as there are seasons for our planet.  We have times when our spirits feel just like these dead plants look — lifeless, helpless, rejected, alone, forgotten by God. 

For the seasons of the world around us, God has a plan.  His plan unfolds like clockwork — spring turns to summer followed by fall and then winter.  I know, as I sit here typing this blog, that spring is on the way, when the grass will turn green, the trees will bud out and produce leaves, and there will be flowers blooming in the landscape.

We can either leave the dead sad-sack plant in the pot on the porch and stare at it, pondering how pitiful it looks and how we wish it were still blooming — OR — we can pitch it in the compost pile, where it will be transformed into something productive and will be used to grow something beautiful again. 

For the seasons in our lives, although God is in complete control, He gives us the free will to choose how we will react to these changing seasons.  We can either sit on the porch and watch life go by, pondering how pitiful we feel in our present situation — OR — we can banish those feelings to the compost pile and allow them to transform us and help us to grow into something better.  That is part of God’s plan, too — but remember, we have to play our part in making it happen.  If we refuse to move forward and trust Him for better days to come, then He allows us to stay stuck in our rut.  It’s not that He is being mean to us; it’s that WE are refusing to search for and receive His blessings.

This may sound a little preachy, but it’s exactly what came to mind when I took the pictures of the frozen plants.  I hope we won’t sit around and dwell on past beauty.  My husband’s advice would be to sit down with the Park’s Seed Catalog and make plans for spring!  Sounds like a good plan to me.  I always enjoy day-dreaming about all the pretty flowers in the catalog.  Some don’t grow well in our climate, but they’re fun to look at, anyway.  Gerbera daisies are some of my favorites.  Maybe we could grow some like this — either from seed, or purchased at the local garden center, where I took these pictures last year.

Spring is definitely on the way!  Soon the little icicles on our bird feeder today will disappear and we’ll have the robins and their feathered friends taking turns for seeds and suet.    We’ll replant our down-under pot and put it back on the shepherd’s crook in the flower bed.  I wonder if we’ll put begonias in it again — or maybe something different this year.  Hmmm….I’ll probably be posting pictures in the summer to let you know.

Hope you all will thaw out soon – and that those of you who may be in a drab season of life will look to our Creator and Lord for renewed strength and for ways to discard the bad memories and move forward with new growth into a season of blessings.

I don’t mean to trivialize the situation for those of you who are in dire situations out of your control.  Some of you feel you are in a prolonged season of winter, and that no change of attitude will bring you out of it.  I have some more thoughts that might be of encouragement — I’m saving them for another post — so, please stay tuned and come back later if you’d like to read the rest of my thoughts. 

(((WARM HUGS)))
   …from Little Things