Eighteenth Day of Lent

 Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Hallelujah!  He is risen!

A Lenten Devotional Guide

By Wallace Nave 

[Some] seed fell into good soil and grew up and produced a crop a hundred times as great…. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Luke 8:8 NAS

Many of the most profound lessons of my life have been learned in the yard or digging in the dirt. Until I got sick, there was no place I would rather have been than planting and pruning and weeding. I enjoyed seeing the lawn flourish and the beds bloom.

In Kentucky, I had a troublemaker in my garden called Johnson grass. Try as I would, there seemed no remedy for the stuff. The more I pulled, the more it grew. One day I dug and dug until I reached the end of a particularly persistent blade. To my amazement, when I had it out of the ground, I found that the green shoot on top of the ground was about three inches high but the roots were about two feet in length! Suddenly I knew why I could not rid my garden of this pest!

I took that piece of grass into the house and showed Pat. We talked about the fact that the grass is so hearty because its roots are so deep and sustaining. We both knew that we wanted to be like that grass —not too much showing on the top but growing deep in the Lord and His Word so that we would be so strong that we could not be uprooted! Cut down. Burned. Cursed. But not destroyed. 

Lord, thank you for causing the seed of your Word to fall on good ground in my own life. Thank you for the desire to nourish that seed much as I have done the seeds in our yard. Thank you for teaching me all that you have about who you are, what you have done for me, how you lived and died that I might live and not die. Thank you for deep roots of faith – roots that hold me firm this Easter and cause me to rejoice in life! Amen

 

Hallelujah! He is Risen!
prepared for First United Methodist Church of Homosassa, Florida
Spring 2011
compiled by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator
reproduced and edited by Patience Fort