With change comes challenge, but with challenge comes great opportunities… often in ways we would never expect!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

What strange times we have lived through in recent months, but it has provided more opportunity for me to spend time in my new garden.

At the start of lockdown my sons brought home from school a sunflower seed which we planted in a pot and put it in the dining room where it is warm and bright. We watered it and tended it and soon we saw a shoot. The shoot grew and we continued to tend it. All three of us were pleased with our efforts, and when the sunflower shoot grew two little leaves, we transplanted it into an old chimney pot outside. We gave it a stick so that it could grow tall and straight. Two days later when we went to check on the leafy shoot I discovered that a slug had had a snack and eaten both leaves clean away! I explained to my boys that without the leaves the flower would never grow…maybe we could try again next year!

I had meant to pull up the tiny green, leafless shoot and plant something more exciting in its place, but time got away from me and I totally forgot. It stayed in the pot as a sign of a forgotten promise, a promise that one day from this tiny seed a yellow flower would grow- but how was this possible without its leaves?!

Several weeks later I noticed that the shoot had grown and not only that, above the nibbled remnants of leaves grew two small, fresh leaves, a second chance for the little shoot- and from this point it hasn’t stopped- it is now four foot high and shows promise of a bud forming at the top.

Trust God and do not rely on your own insight! I had given up on the plant, I used my own insight…God knew better!

The times that we have spent recently away from our Companies has been challenging and maybe we have
not been able to share parade evenings and activities in the way that is familiar to us, but change and challenge provides great opportunity. As we look to our future sessions, may we be open to God in our planning and our decision making. May we know that God’s plans are bigger than our own. When our attempts maybe at first don’t appear to work, may we be given the perseverance to carry on, the listen to others and to listen to God.

In the coming weeks, look for the Son, shining in our lives, through the challenges, so that we may come through this time knowing that we have not relied on our own insight, but on God.

May God uphold you and bless you as you continue to advance Christ’s Kingdom in your context.

Nicola Langton-Miller
Liverpool & District Battalion Chaplain