When I thought of my family today, God showed me a tree. 🌳

So alive and real. I could see its leaves 🍃 rustle.

And he brought me right down, right under, right into the ground.

And he told me,

He sires in secret 🤫

He starts the growth in the dark, in the cupboard. In that confined small hidden place called the heart ❤️. In the darkened room.

That place which is not seen, but is unseen.

This is where he begins to grow.

That is growth.

That is where the seed begins to open itself, and a sliver of hope crawls out.

And into the hidden, it searches.

Into the dark it lengthens and takes ground.

Hope and love begin to move internal, entwining and circling.

Its structure widening.

What God starts on the inside, in the smallness, will come forward, will come up, will grow in strength and be the uplifter of all that’s around it.

And behold, one day, its roots are no longer like threads. 🧵

Its roots, no longer gentle and fragile, but now they are monstrous, pushing from under the surface, fracturing pavements and upheaving buildings. Strength of its structure seems to peak through the seams of life, giving glimpses to the power of presence beneath the surface.

Its leaves will grow and its flowers 🌺 will bloom. The shade of rest, it will give to others and its growth will be consumed as its fruit.🍈

All from the humble beginning.

All from a seed 🌱 that cracked.

All from within a small and tiny planting of something so minuet.

Father we know your desire gardens; full of everything good.

I don’t want to be just one tree. I want to be many. 🌲 🌴 🌳

I want to be a garden. 🪴 A garden of many and much, a garden of every good and beautiful thing. I want the parts of my life to be trees of variety.

I don’t want to be hard. I don’t want my seeds to stay closed.

Crack open hearts. Crack open those seeds deep deep down inside us.

Make us living gardens of wonderful glorious mighty trees! 🌴 🌳 🌲

With trunks so large of testimony, with roots of uplift and upheaval and fruits so very good to eat.

Psalm 139:14

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
    as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

Exodus 8:15

¹⁵ But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.

Genesis 2:8&9

⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.⁹ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.