Lessons from the garden...

While I was outside in the garden today, something hit me.
Not just the beauty of it all… but the brutal process that got it there.
Every bloom…
Every pepper in my hand…
Started with something that had to die.
A seed buried.
Hidden.
Split apart.
Unrecognizable.
I couldn’t help but feel the weight of it...
This is the Gospel.
Not a prettier version of your past.
Not “God cleaned me up.”
But death… and resurrection.
We love the idea of “new life” but we fight like crazy to hold onto our old one.
Our habits.
Our pride.
Our bitterness.
Our comfort.
But Jesus didn’t come to make us slightly improved. He came to make us new.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says:
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”
That means something has to go.
And sometimes it feels like loss.
Like grief.
Like everything is falling apart.
But what if it’s actually being planted?
What if this breaking you feel… isn’t the end of you… but the BECOMING of you?
God doesn’t just work around our pain.
He grows something through it.
The "dying to self" is part of the miracle.
But.... So is the life that rises.