Sowing on Schedule

My calendar says it's time to plant some seeds, inside and out. The Mexican Sunflowers and the Artichoke needed to be sown indoors two days ago. The violas, poppies, and other wild seeds, needed to be sown outdoors a week ago. But the tomatoes, peppers, hyssop and rudbeckia, are peacefully nestled in the fine potting soil that is theoretically designed for seed starting. This was the year I was going to set a schedule and stick to it. This was to be the year I wouldn't feel like I was always behind and running to catch up. But I'm only half on schedule. I am behind again.

Fortunately, plants have a certain graciousness of their own, and a flexibility I'm learning to depend on. Of course, there are limits. And success is based on not exceeding those limits.

I've had several years (a couple of decades?) of procrastinating a consistent time of meeting with God. Understand, I think it is absolutely amazing--incomprehensibly incredible!-- to think that He would want to spend time with me and hear from me for a concentrated, undistracted, time. I've known this in my head, and it called to my heart, but I couldn't get through certain blocks. I see now that so many of the blocks were the voice of doubt--the voice of the enemy-- that would say "you have too much to do, get going," "you don't know how to do this right," "you are not an intercessor", "where are the answered prayers to confirm this is even effectual?" I would say to people I would pray for them, and then feel guilty knowing that I didn't have a particular "list" I could add them to and bring them before the Lord in some consistent manner, so I would pray a short shotgun prayer and assuage my guilt.

But a watershed moment happened when I encountered a fairly innocuous quote from a book a good friend sent my husband. In Letters to the Church, Francis Chan explains about when he heard from the Lord to leave the mega-church he'd founded. The relevant sentence: "I had more peace in obeying what I thought I heard than in ignoring it."

I don't know if I am "doing it right." I have yet to see specific requests answered. But I do have more peace in obeying and even some days powering through, than in ignoring the long-heard call to prayer. I'm still working on not being distracted, and overcoming the flesh that wants the "environment" and all to be just so before I can open my mouth to sing and speak to the One who made me. But this lifestyle is so much sweeter.

And as with sowing the seeds on schedule for this year's garden, I depend on the graciousness of the Lord. I'm late. I know I'm late. But I’m here now and I'm determined.