This spring I have tried sprucing up the front yard a bit. I pulled weeds and trimmed bushes. I planted a rose bush and some friendly looking little blue flowers to welcome me home each day.
The roses, the little flowers, and the not so well trimmed bushes are lovely, but the plant that captures my heart is the tree that lives in the corner of my front yard close to the street. I don't know what kind of tree it is. I just call it the heart tree. It branches out wide, but not tall. In the early spring it has sweet little pinkish purple buds. Later the buds are replaced with pods that remind me of peas. The pods, newly fallen, spring up quickly filling my yard with seedlings. Everywhere the pods fall, little heart shaped sprouts grow. Then, finally, the blooms and pods disappear altogether to give way to hand-sized heart-shaped leaves, full and verdant.
The heart tree has turned into a prayer. A prayer that love would grow in my home. That it would flourish like a tree by streams of water. That my home would be a place of shade and joy and comfort and rest. That whoever enters would feel loved and be filled with love to give others.
Father, let the love of Christ grow here.
Love that glowed from it like firelight from its windows at night.
- On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Andrew Peterson
2 comments:
Love does grows here. I feel it when I step in the open front door. I know it when I rest into a cup of tea. I discern it when I fall into a nap. I taste it when I bring breakfast to my lips. I hear it when I note laughter from backyard fun. I see it when I see Catan spread wide. Love grows here.
And Love grows in you.
You have a redbud! But I like "heart tree" just as well. I have a sneaking suspicion that the love has been growing like a weed at your house this year... and I'm looking forward to it getting completely out of control in the coming years. ( :
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