This past summer, I told my husband that, instead of paying for a lawn service, I would be happy to mow our yard myself. I am always looking for excuses to be outside. Plus, I definitely could use the exercise, and we would be saving money. Best of all, my husband could watch our children inside while I enjoyed peace and quiet while mowing outside. It was a win-win-win-win!
As it turns out, mowing the lawn every week in the hot Florida sun was not the relaxing exercise I had persuaded myself it would be. However, I still would say that the benefits outweighed the drawbacks. One of those unexpected benefits was the time I spent “learning” my yard.
This summer, as I walked up and down over every square inch of my lawn, I saw there was so much more to it than I had realized: an extra shady corner where only one type of weed will grow; a particularly thick area of grass; a small mound too small even to notice from far away; a bare spot; a place where stink bugs like to congregate; and a patch of tiny purple wildflowers that brought back vivid memories of my childhood yard. Every time I mowed, I noticed something new. As it turned out, enjoying my yard from the comfort of my chair and actually walking through it were two vastly different things.
This summer, I also started rereading the book of Psalms. I think, perhaps, this is the book of the Bible I have read the most in my life. Yet, as I read it this time, I was amazed by it all over again. Some passages I recognized as “extra special” because those were the verses I had actually walked through myself. I saw promises I had claimed while I was in college. Truths emerged that had carried me through a dark time. I ruminated on phrases that had challenged me when I was backsliding. I reread my scribbled notes in the margins that reminded me of answers to prayer. Still, during this summer’s reread, verses surfaced that I previously had never seen in that way. Promises arose that were extra special because of a situation I was dealing with at that time. I discovered words of comfort that I had not needed before that particular day. For example, I was feeling nervous about an impending hurricane when I opened my Bible and the Holy Spirit directed my eye to Psalm 36:5-6: Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast. For many years, I had relished the beauty of those verses from the comfort of my chair but had never truly known them until I needed to walk through them.
It is awe-inspiring to know God has crafted His Word so that verses we have seen and read all our lives will come alive to us just when we need to walk through them. How comforting it is to know that there is still so much yet to discover as we traverse the garden of Truth in His Word!
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!… – Romans 11:33
by Abigail Medford
