God’s Glorious Creation
I live in north Florida and love gardening, and this is one of my favorite times of year. After being stuck inside all winter, it’s time to go out and enjoy and marvel at the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. It’s time to clean out everything the winter and frost appeared to kill; but in reality, all sorts of new life and beauty are popping up everywhere! The daffodils and azaleas are blooming in a blaze of glorious color, as the beautiful, winter blooming camellias begin to fade. The amaryllis’ are already coming up with their bloom stalks growing up straight and tall; growing by inches daily! The bare canes of the roses and hydrangeas are putting out new leaves with promise of beautiful blooms to come. The dead growth on the iris’, cannas, calla lilies, gingers, day lilies and many other varieties of blooming plants too numerous to mention, are giving way to new growth, displaying an amazing blessing of regeneration and increase during the winter months.
This is not a new experience for me, as I’ve been gardening for many years now, but it does bring a new perspective as I consider the miracle of marriage restoration. Just as with all of the beautiful things now coming to life in my yard that once appeared to be dead and hopeless, so it is with our marriages. And just as God regenerated and multiplied the plants in my yard, He can and will do for our marriages. Just as I could not do anything to prevent the damage of winter or to make them come back this spring, we are helpless to do anything to save our marriages. And just as there are certain tasks I had to perform to maintain the right environment for my plants so God could do His part to restore them to their glory this spring, there are certain things we have to do that God calls us to do so He can restore our marriages to greater glory than ever before. And one last observation is that the harsher and colder the winter, the more glorious and abundant the blooms are the following season, and I believe we will find the same is true when it comes to the restoration of our marriages. So no matter how dead and barren your marriage looks today, just remember that winter does end and the glory of spring does come! And when it does, you will be able to see all the wonderful things the Lord was doing even when you couldn’t see it!
When we look at the wonder of God’s creation and the restoration He shows us every year in the beauty of nature, we are without excuse, and there’s no reason to doubt He can and will do the same thing in our marriages, as we see in Romans 1:20:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.