I haven't exactly had an easy life, and this hasn't exactly been an easy year. When I wrote an entry at the end of last May entitled, "The Night Before Everything Changes," I had no idea just how prophetic that utterance would become. Almost everything I took for granted has changed over the course of the last eighteen months, and that was on the heels of a decade that had also brought cataclysms of changes in my life. So, I'm familiar with change, I'm familiar with pain, I'm familiar with disappointment, and I'm familiar with the way it feels to wake up one morning and realize that you just have to make the best of things and start moving forward. :)
Which brings me to why I love this verse so much. Every once in a while - if you are a true student of the scripture - you will find yourself peeking out from the pages in the most unusual places, and this morning, as I read, I found myself again. There I am, in the dead center of this passage of Isaiah. I may never be a Deborah, or an Esther, an Abigail, or a Ruth...but I AM the planting of The Lord.
Why, exactly, does Alesha Leveritt deserve that distinction? Allow me to explain...I know ashes, I know mourning, and I know heaviness. I know them better than I would ever have chosen. In fairness, I should be depressed, or at the very least bitter and angry. And allow me to confess something - if it were all about ME, I would be all those things. I'm not superhuman, and I have every tendency toward human weakness. I'm probably weaker than most. But above and beyond who I am...HE IS. And Christ within me has taken the ashes and made something beautiful. He has taken the mourning and given me joy. He has taken the heaviness and made me glad.
I am the planting of The Lord because every time I smile when I have the right to weep...every time I refuse to give up and post some ridiculous painful rant for all the world to read...every time I wake up and just keep moving forward...EVERY TIME, I am a living testament to His righteousness, His power to restore, His power to heal, and His ever present help. For every moment I have not fallen apart...HE IS, and because He is, I continue to stand, and I will work out His commission...I will work to rebuild the waste places and repair the desolations of the former generations, because that is what He has called me, the planting of The Lord, to do...
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