Growing In The Dark
- Sep 7, 2016
- 3 min read
When I was a kid my family were snowbirds, so we had a house in Miami and a house up north, actually in the Bronx that we would go to during the summer months.
My mother had a green thumb; she loved plants and gardenias, rose bushes any and all types of gardening. Since I was my mother’s shadow, I wanted to do what she did and be what she was. So when I was about 7 or 8 years old, she bought me a Barbie garden set that came with a plastic tray which had a cardboard garden background and a packet of seeds that you plant in dirt (which I grabbed out of the philodendron pot) and water.
I followed the instructions and placed the plastic garden tray on my white dresser...a week later we were all on an Eastern Airlines flight from Miami to LaGuardia airport for the summer of ’73.
I thought about that garden set maybe NEVER while we were away for the next 2 months. It still hadn’t crossed my mind when we pulled into the driveway of our house back in Miami. I still didn’t give it a first or second thought as I watched my father & mother unpack the luggage from the car. It still hadn’t dawned on me when I skipped to my bedroom with my genuine imitation stewardess (flight attendant) bag. I swung the door open of my bedroom and flipped the light switch on...
SWEET MARY MOTHER OF JOSEPH!
That garden set had grown up those daffodil yellow walls like a plague! All I saw was some crazy vines all over the place! I screamed like a teenager in a horror movie. My mother came running in and just about screamed herself and we're talking about a woman who was the Plant Whisperer!
To this very day: I don’t like plants, I don’t have plants in my house, I don’t walk through grass, I’ve NEVER been in my back yard, I don’t like silk floral arrangements, I don’t like yellow, I don’t like green, I sleep with a night light on, I WAS TRAUMATIZED!
I remember my mother asking my father as he scraped those vines off my bedroom wall, “Well, Henry, how did it grow in the dark?”
My Barbie garden set grew in the dark, and so does our faith. Sometimes when we are in our darkest times, God is growing our faith.
Just because we don’t see a light, doesn’t mean that it’s a dead situation. That there’s no room for growing in the dark.
God’s Word states…“Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy, though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.” ~ Micah 7:8
God IS the light in any and all darkness. Even when it seems black as pitch, there is a Light. Sometimes we feel surrounded by the darkness of betrayal by friends. Surrounded by the darkness of a sinful past. Surrounded by the darkness of past or present hurts. But God is ever present as Light nurturing your faith. Cultivating your faith. Pruning your faith. Even in all that dryness. Remember, my garden set wasn’t watered in over 2 months, yet it grew. God is saturating you with the Living Water.
“I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” ~John 12:46
The darkness is only a season; it too shall pass just like He promises in John 12:46. As God cultivates your faith during the dark times, His light will shine brightly as your circumstances or situations begin to change.
Believe in His grace, Believe in His mercy, Believe in His Light. Amen?
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