what's really safe . . .

Wanted to write about my mom today but couldn't find the quote I was going to start out with.  So, I'll save that topic for another day.  Just had a cousin of John's stay with us for a couple of days.   He's a great guy.  We had lots of fun and conversations about life, ourselves, and how we fit into the grand scheme of things.

Which brings me to today's topic.   I wanted to share one of the analogies that Lysa Terkeurst makes in the book Becoming More than a Good Bible Study Girl.   It was one of the best parts of the lesson for me because it was simple yet powerful. 

Think about your life as the planting of a seed .  We all know that, eventually, a seed grows up and becomes something lovely.  But the process of becoming that beautiful flower, or plant, or shrub is oftentimes painful.  Like when the seed gets pulled out of its safe little package and is pushed down into the muck and mire -  to a deep dark place where it's not even noticed.  Then, horror of horrors, the seed is watered and begins to disintegrate.  Seems like the end of everything for that poor little seed, or is it?

John 12:24 The truth is, a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil - Unless it dies it will be alone-a single seed.  But its death will produce many new kernels - a plentiful harvest of new lives.  (NLT)

Slowly but surely what pops up out of the soil is the beginning of something beautiful.  A flowering plant, or tree, or flower rising up out of the death of something else. 

Even though the "safe place" for the seed was its packet, think of how much it would have missed if it would have stayed where it felt secure.  Granted, it would have survived if it remained there.  But, it would never have felt the soil or received the water to grown and blossom into what it was always meant to be. 

So, I guess what I came away with from this study was to be more bold - less afraid.  Pray for things to be hard, and, in that difficulty, blossom and flower into the girl I was meant to be. 

What about you?  What's your "safe" place?  Is it holding you back from being all that you were created to be?  Yes, playing it safe, seems, well, safe.  But if you don't experience the dark places or the nourishing rains, you will never know the joy of bursting out of the ground, basking in the sun, and growing to be so much more than you ever expected to be.