An Expected End

This is my mother standing in the middle of the garden at home. I love this picture, not only because it is so green, as is Upstate New York, but because my mother is dwarfed by her squash plants. When she planted the squash seeds in the ground, there had been a lot of rain. She wasn't even sure they'd grow--they'd probably rot in the soupy garden. But then it dried out and the little shoots started coming up. After a month or so there hadn't been any rain at all. Mother started worrying about whether or not they'd die in the middle of all the dry clods that were now the garden. Some weeks later, she sent this picture. Laughing, she told me that the squash had taken over everything. Here's proof.

It strikes me that my life feels somewhat like these squash plants: more challenges than I feel I can manage followed by a drought of good things. Fortunately, I know the end of the story:

I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together; That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it. (Isaiah 41:18-20).

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. (Jeremiah 19:11).