Waiting with Hope

We started in April, after the last snow had finally melted away and the ground began to soften. We turned the compost, cleaned up the trash that had blown into the garden, cut up the wood that had fallen during the winter storms, cleared out last year’s plants, and put new seeds into the ground. And now we wait.

We walk to the garden and see nothing coming up. We visit a second time. Nothing yet. But we never despair. Because we have hope. The seed we planted is a promise. We trust that though the seed is hidden from our eyes, something is stirring, something is striving upward into the sunlight.

This trustful waiting is what we are called to do in every aspect of our lives. We are here in this lifetime by the grace of God. The seed has been planted – we have been planted – with the intention that we will flower in a significant way, touch other lives in some way that we rarely perceive or comprehend. We are part of the unfolding of the universe and our presence matters.

There are seeds planted in us throughout our lives as well. The seed that flowers into our relationships. The one that blossoms into our career. Or another that opens us up to the spiritual life. We cannot see the end goal of these flowerings. Sometimes, we get a glimpse, we look back and see the way we came and say, “Ah! That was why that happened. Yes, it all unfolded so beautifully, even though the way was hard and frightening.” But to truly see the entire picture we have to wait patiently on the harvest, the endgame of our lives.

In the meantime, in those moments of uncertainty, we can choose to tap into the wisdom in our hearts that KNOWS that love holds us safely in its embrace and will help us emerge from the darkness of the moment to surface, finally, into the light.