Pulling Up Carrots
Good Morning!
Have you ever pulled up carrots from the garden? (Yes?) Do you know how to pull them up so they don’t break when you’re pulling them? Can you tell us how to do that?
Pulling up carrots or picking other vegetables can be really fun and exciting, especially if you love surprises. One family I know plants carrot seeds every April for the summer harvest; they always plant rainbow blends.
When the time comes to pick the carrots, their four-year-old daughter becomes her mom’s favourite harvester, ready for surprises. There are always surprises, because they plant rainbow carrot seeds. First they loosen up the soil, then pull it at the base.
The first one is purple! (props…)
The next one is white!
An orange one is the third.
Then, they wonder, each time they pull up another one,
“What colour will this one be?”
Living with God means we are ready for surprises. Surprising us is how God works with us. Our birth, our growth, every life passage we go through waits for us with surprises. I remember the first eye contact Peace, my oldest son, made when he was just born. When the midwife lifted him up, he was crying as if he missed the place he just left. Then he was gently put on my chest. He opened one eye, and looked at me for a few seconds. Then he began to stop crying. The first surprise he had in his lifetime was that he could see.
Not every child in its mother’s womb can make it out to the world safely. Last week, Peace’s class welcomed 7 newborn chicks and 7 eggs which were about to hatch. The eggs were put in an incubator, a special place for keeping them warm and dry. Finally 6 newborn chicks cracked their eggshells and came out cheeping! But one could not make it out of the egg. He could only make one tiny little hole in his shell, and then he stopped moving. It made everyone in the class feel so sad - it was a sad surprise.
We are born differently.
We grow differently.
Our lives are different.
We all are different and unique. But every life is perfect, because it is a God-given surprise.
God sees abilities rather than disabilities. This means God sees what we can do and be.
(SEE THE ABILITY)
God always has a deeper love for us all than we imagine. If we were carrots, we would be rainbow carrots in God’s sight: rainbow carrots of different colours and different shapes.
In the marketplace, those carrots that are slightly misshapen don’t even make it to the grocery store.
But in God’s love, we are placed together, with different abilities and different gifts of God’s surprises. We are many, we are one.
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