The LORD will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the LORD.

—Isaiah 51:3

“Is it because we had potatoes *growing from* our rotting potatoes that we shoved in the cabinet for several months?” Drew asked.

It was a fair question. We do, in fact, tend to put organic things in refrigerator drawers and kitchen cabinets, blissfully ignoring them until the sheer stench of decay causes us to wake up a bit to the reality of entropy and do something about it. Such was the case with The Easter Potatoes, of which I had purchased an unreasonable amount because as we all know the worst thing possible on Easter is not having enough scalloped potatoes. It is now July, and I am proud to report that after checking monthly on those dank, unused potatoes then promptly forgetting the undeniable mass of roots and rot fermenting in the dark recesses of our lower cabinet, it took us a mere two months to remedy the situation. I felt a keen sense of accomplishment last month as I emptied our homegrown compost into a tidy green compostable bag and rushed them out to our bin while desperately trying not to inhale. 

“No,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. “I do not believe my dream last night was induced by the unpleasant memory of our rotting potatoes.” But I did dream about our compost bin.

In my dream, I was walking across our backyard to toss a neatly tied bag of kitchen matter into our compost bin. As I opened the green lid, I was surprised to find a thick layer of soil covering the compost and sprightly shoots of green sprouting up. “They must be weeds,” I concluded, and proceeded to uproot them. But when I unearthed the first weed, I was delighted to find a full-grown, healthy carrot dangling from the end of it. Surprised and curious, I uprooted the next “weed” and discovered a bunch of purple carrots—a favorite of mine and Drew’s. After uncovering such treasure, I ran into the house and told Drew, “I thought there was only trash in our compost bin, but I found weeds growing that turned out to be rainbow carrots instead!” I remember being struck by the fact that with zero effort from us, something wonderful was growing that we could not possibly have anticipated or imagined.

As I continue to ponder this dream, I’m beginning to wonder if it is about more than carrots. I believe it is about redemption. During my divorce, all I could see was dirt and death and decay. “There is no way,” I thought, “That this will turn out okay—that my life will ever contain trust and joy again.” But God’s eyes see differently than mine, to the deep-down hiddenness of things. How could I have known that even in the midst of my devastation God was planting seeds of redemption in the form of—among other things—a beautiful husband with the same birthday as mine and a similar propensity for ignoring decaying fruits and vegetables? These providential delights are the kind of carrots that take time, obscurity, and silence to grow. And while they are growing, they might even look like weeds. There is a specific type of beauty and growth that only the soil of suffering can produce. We know this instinctually, but it is frightfully hard to believe when we are in the midst of our dark night and can only see what is dying. Yet all the while, God sees what is growing.

There is a passage in Isaiah 49 that keeps poking me in the shoulder, and I suspect my rainbow carrot dream connects to it in some way. In it, God is speaking through the prophet Isaiah about His promise of restoration and redemption for the exiled Israelites.

Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away.

The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, “This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.”

Then you will say in your heart, “Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?”
(Isaiah 49:19-21)

Like my dream, this passage begins with trash and ruin yet ends in a surprising crop of growth and new life. “I was bereaved and barren, exiled and rejected, left all alone, but these—where have they come from?” In other words, “I did nothing to plant these seeds or water this soil—how can it be that my life is now overflowing with the fruit of redemption?” Despite the fact that God happens to excel at cultivating redemption from the most difficult soil, we often try to grow redemption on our own with the thought, “It is all up to me to get myself out of this mess and clean up this dirt pile as best as I can, to make my life appear clean and shiny—as if this sorrow never happened.” But to assume responsibility for our redemption is to miss out on the sweet reality that God likes making beautiful things out of dirt. We look at our rotting trash heap and see only decay, but God looks at it and sees clay. This has always been true, from the very beginning. After all, how did God create Adam and Eve? From dirt and breath, in a garden.

I think God likes to get his hands dirty. I think God likes to birth new life in the barren places of us, to grow rainbow carrots in garbage bins.

Will we trust this?

Dear one, if you’ve got a plot of earth that looks suspiciously like dirt and decay right now, take heart. Do not despise it—lean into it. Look for rainbow carrots where you only see weeds. Become the beholder of your redemption, the one who refuses to look away from the dark soil of your life until you are filled to overflowing with amazement at what has been growing all along.

And so may the Lord guide you always; may God satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and strengthen you when you feel like giving up.

May your life become a well-watered garden blossoming from seeds of redemption, a fountain whose waters are ever-flowing.

And may you rejoice and sing, worship and play, trust and rest in the dirt-caked hands of your attentive Gardener, who sees what is growing just beneath the surface, who holds more goodness in store for you than you can possibly ask or imagine.

Amen.

Going Deeper: Listen to “The Gardener” by Sarah Sparks—an honest exploration of growth and death while learning to trust the Gardener.

You tilled up my heart and then planted a seed
With time it watered and sprouted a dream
Granted me sight so I could see a need
But why let me see it to take it from me?