Change

Sometimes I run across a story that really touches my heart.  This is one of those stories.

When my Grandmother met Jesus on June 27, 2009, the life I’d always known had just been uprooted it felt.  Yes, I have my husband, my children, and grandchildren, but the woman who had been there for me from the time I was born was gone.  During a Wednesday night Bible Study at church, my pastor read this story to us, and it really hit home for me.

Jan Riggenbach writes a newspaper column on gardening.  In an article she wrote about how to plant bedding plants, we learn something about Christian growth.

Giving new bedding plants some rough treatment at planting time,” she says, “may be the best thing you can do to help them survive in the garden.  When I was new to gardening, I tried to set tomatoes, petunias, and other bedding plants in the garden without disturbing their roots at all.  Nowadays, I’m much more ruthless….”

Riggenbach says she squeezes the bottoms of the flexible plastic pots to get the plants out of their container and then she inspects the soil ball.

“If the plant has been growing in its pot so long that the roots are circling the bottom,” says Riggenbach, “I jab my finger into the bottom of the soil and pull down to untangle the roots…. If the whole pot is filled with circling roots, I have to be merciless.  I don’t; worry if I break some of the roots; that’s better than allowing the roots to continue to circle when the plants are growing in the garden.  Most bedding plants shrug off this rough treatment.”

Christians often resemble rootbound plants.  We grow complacent and comfortable where we are.  Our roots circle around and around in the same small area, no longer reaching out for life and nourishment and growth.  The healthiest thing God can do for us is shake up our roots and put us in new soil.

This is what I feel like God did to me that day.  My roots have been so wrapped around my Grandma for my entire life.  I had to let her go to her Heavenly home.  The Lord really roughed up my roots, it hasn’t been fun, but it’s been good.  I have re-committed my life to Him since and have been growing in the Lord daily.  I know that my Grandma is in Heaven now and I will see her again one day, and I know that she would be happy that her going home has resulted in my getting closer to the Lord.