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LIFE !
Life !
Lately, I have often been thinking deeply on what life is: its provenance and its origin. I’ve been looking for everything that is hidden under this very simple word: Life. Only one syllable is needed to express an act that exceeds us, in the image of The One who has given us this capacity.
Let me take you to visit my garden.
When you penetrate it
No big alley
Only a few pathways
…
Yes, this is it, simply just to be.
There we meet big trees, planted by my ancestors. Old trees, with strange names. I like listening to their souvenirs and their parables murmured by the leaves in the wind. Sometimes, when they are too old, or take too much space, we have to knock them down, in order to leave room for the young trees that grow under them.
There are flowers too. Lots of flowers. A few hawthorn, those flowers that I loved so much as a young girl. Cornflowers, carnations, pansies…and even the seeds of dandelions that fly in the wind. I had so much fun picking these flowers, and observing for a long time before blowing them in an outburst of laughter.
But this morning, I would like to take you to a very particular place in my garden. Hidden in its heart, by the copses, a visitor would be surprised at the bent of a path while admiring the flowers in the apple trees. It is a place of birth and of hope. Protected from the wind by the trees, with just enough sun, it is the most secret place in my garden. It is also my favorite.
It is there that I planted with love the two young olive trees from Ein Harod (Israel).
I had picked there a few olives, only one “souvenir” from a place that my Father had called me. He had planted them, and with his secrets of a loving gardener, the shoots had come out in only 3 months! To offer them to me then. What a surprise… I had planted them beside Iddo, a small seed brought back from Costa Rica, the only one of a whole series that has grown. Already a young silk tree is being birthed. I like spending time in this place of my garden. Place of births and of hope…I like letting myself being taught by my Father through these births.
Let us go back to the story since the beginning. Let us imagine a seed. This tiny little thing easily lost… They are all different, even if we do not pay attention: they are minuscule. We have to take the time to pause to see them.
Let me offer you a few: mustard seeds, round like little marbles. Promises of plants giving bright-yellow flowers. Seeds of carnations of poets, which fly in the wind, right on the so-fragile flower. Seeds of silk tree, tiny brown snails, an enormous tree that can live for hundreds of years, from the baobab family…
I heard a phrase one day that I never forgot: “A seed is concentrated life.” All the life potential, all the fullness of the promise are enclosed inside. Hidden. Well-kept secrets. Nothing is visible: apparently, a tiny little thing, minuscule and useless. Without any odor, without “life”. No, nothing to catch the eye. And still, in its heart, is hidden all the hope and the strength of the baobab, the poesy of the carnation, the secrets of rubber, or the fruit of the pomegrenate… all this, concentrated in a small shell of only a few-millimeters of diameter.
The next step is to accept “losing” these seeds in the earth. Accepting letting them go, alone in the dark. Accepting that the shell of protection breaks in the solitude, hidden in the depths of the earth, under the snow. Accepting to live this painful break to let the young shoot slip out towards daylight, which will strengthen with time, will take more and more width and roots one season after another, so that it becomes what it was already in essence.
After this little tour with you in my garden, I would like to lead you to another garden, hidden too, and even more secret. I would like to talk to you about us, men and women. About this power of life that God has placed in us within marriage. This union through which He chose to create life again! At the time when the bridegroom knows his wife, at the time when this egg, seed of life, pressed out among millions of other seeds, will also be split in the hidden dark place. The birth of the life of this mystery of union, an act of love according to His heart. The woman was born out of the man: and it is through the union of these two beings, bringing them together to one body that God decided to create life again! It is so beautiful that it is hard to express the depth. I pray that you would be able to grasp Life, and what it is according to His heart!
Here, from fertilization, the egg goes down to nestle in the womb. Dare I say it: even before our birth, we experience this garden prepared in advance, this place where God prepared the days and the nights, trees and animals, to place man next. This protected place, this cozy nest where everything is prepared to welcome the fertilized egg: life.
A new birth, a new creation to which God gives life by blowing on it. The first thing that we do at birth: breathing! Even before breathing out! We breathe in this breath that God put down on our life!
When will your people breathe
Source : http://ceciletoulza.unblog.fr/
This is the mystery of life! This is our calling and our destiny: to make visible His kingdom and His Glory, through our lives, through Life!
To make visible the invisible.
Source : http://solidaritudes.canalblog.com
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