Growing Tulips In The Desert
How does one grow tulips in the desert? These delicate, translucent ladies with their hearts spread open to the sun. Like several pink brush strokes rising from yellow centers streaked with black stamen, they sing their spring songs.
“With lots of love and care,” answered one of the women at work.
Bewildered, I pictured our Arizona clay earth with sandy soil giving way only to jackhammers, not dainty dressed-for-spring tulips. Even with mulch and peat moss and hauled in dark moist soil, the bulb would not have any room to send down shoots, I imagined.
But my friend reassured me that she has grown many tulips in the hardened Arizona earth, with love and care. Her eyes gleamed.
She gently cradled the vase in her hands with a tender touch. One I’m sure she used on her plants.
“You just take a slip from the plant’s stem and put it in water,” she explained. “And roots start growing naturally.”
I wondered if I looked like an inept gardener. Someone with no experience in making beautiful things grow in parched earth and blazing sun. Probably a good assessment.
The Master Gardener, however, has much experience in making beautiful things grow even if the heartland is parched. He pours His tender love drops on the clay, softening it while He works in the rich soil of His word. Because He shades the delicate bloom from the noonday sun, the edges do not burn nor the petals wilt. The flower just has to receive His love and nourishment.
We just need to let the Master plant us where He chooses, even if the soil of life is hard, and spread open our hearts to His tender love and care. Drinking of His water and soaking up the richness of His word will produce a thing of beauty in our lives.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that send out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7, 8 NIV
Are you being deep-watered by the Master Gardener?
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My garden this year after a decade of drought is such a living testimony to the beauty of a well watered garden……it is so easy to praise His glorious grace.
But I remember finding Him in the desert, where the sand is Holy ground…..and have left that song at the bottom of my blog page.
This is a wonder! I love tulips but I confess, I am most neglectful of them. Yet they continue to return to me every year. Taking special care like your friend does is a lesson for me in attentiveness. That’s a very good Lenten lesson, Janis.
I love it! Thanks for sharing sweet one.
Be blessed bunches,
Sarah
lovely Janis ~ trees of righteousness, plantings of the Lord…
i also love His picture painted in Is 58 ~
our opp to be a well watered garden ~
this chptr being the focus of my Lenten fast ~
much to contemplate here …
thanks for your beauty shared today “)
tea’s on with some wearin’ o’ the green for
St Patrick’s! … see you soon!
Hi Janis,
Yes, accepting where we are planted when the soil isn’t good, meaning your circumstances, isn’t pleasant at all. Experiencing this myself. But as God waters us, we will bloom into something beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
Blessings,
Judy
Love this. I live in tulip country. They are a major crop in the nearby Skagit Valley. And my mom lives in Arizona, so I know what you mean about the soi! Such a great analogy for your WFW scripture. Thank you.
wow, never thought of it like this Janice, I right away thought of the sower and where the seeds fell when you talked about being a planter, but I love how you got this out of Jer. How often we forget that we are not always placed in the soil we long for but rather have to make due with what we have!