It’s a bustling and busy holiday weekend at the RV park on Mission Bay and I’m sitting at the picnic table at our campsite with my Bible and laptop. I can look out and see the wind gently blowing across the bay, little children are playing in the sand beneath the tents under a parent’s watchful eye. Kids are riding bikes, dogs are barking and there are intermittent voices and music coming from the campsites next to ours. My husband is sitting in a lounge chair and our dog is laying underneath him in the shade on a mat. Our life is different today. We used to go camping in the desert every winter holiday weekend where we would ride the endless waves of sand in our dune buggy and quads. We would load up our 40 foot fifth wheel trailer and tow it out to Gordon’s Well or Glamis and find the perfect spot to set up camp. When we rode, we started early in the morning after breakfast and would go for hours, stopping back at camp long enough to feed the family for lunch and then we would be off to play in the sand again. Elisha loved his dune buggy; he loved to go fast and for a fun ride and when we stopped, he would look at his Dad and say, “A ride, a ride.” My husband would strap him back in and off they’d go again. I’m not sure who had more fun, Elisha squealing with delight or Richard driving faster and higher on the lip of the bowl, egging on our beautiful child to laugh even harder. All of that changed when Elisha passed away. I couldn’t bring myself to go out to the desert again and so we sold all of our sand toys and our fifth wheel trailer.
John 12:24 says, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” What if we must lose everything in life in order to really understand what it is like to truly live an abundant life? Ann Voskamp in her book “The Broken Way,” says, “Unless we die, unless we surrender, unless we sacrifice, we remain alone. Lonely. But if we die, if we surrender, if we sacrifice, that is when we experience the abundance, that is when we dance in communion. The life that yields the most – yields the most.” Whenever I am going through an incredibly lonely valley, when the storms are raging and the wind is blowing and the darkness is closing in, it is there that I consider my Heavenly Father and look up. All of a sudden when I take my eyes off of myself and my situation, I can see the sunbeams breaking through the clouds, kissing the earth and touching me in the midst of my pain with a beautiful picture of His presence peaking through the cracks in the sky and into the broken places in my heart. When we plant a seed into the ground, it must split open and die for it to make new plants and that is how new life grows; the seed no longer exists and is swallowed up with the root of the new life that is formed from the fertile ground.
And that is exactly what happened to our little family; one seed fell to the ground and died and though he lives in heaven and in our hearts, we remain here alone and we are picking up the pieces of a shattered and broken life. Although we will always cherish and never forget the fun times we had in the desert with our family, we are now creating new memories. Each day as we offer ourselves as a sacrifice to our Lord, a new life is slowly emerging and as we yield ourselves in complete abandon to our Father, we can see evidence of a beautiful lush garden that we have planted, and we find joy in the hopelessness, delight in the despair and safety in the everlasting arms of our eternal God.
