This morning I harvested a pumpkin from my garden. It’s beautiful: a deep rich orange color, a little bit smaller than a basketball, and perfectly round. It’s the kind of pumpkin you would see in pictures colored by young children in a coloring contest and in advertisements for pumpkin spice lattes. It is glorious!
But I didn’t plant pumpkins in my garden this year.
It’s a bit of a mystery. Was there a mix-up at the seed factory? Did a bird drop a “special present” while flying overhead? Did someone want to play a long-term practical joke? (Trust me…I have friends & family who love the long game prank.) Whatever the cause, the fact remains that in my cucumber patch, a pumpkin vine sprouted.
I thought about pulling it out. I wasn’t planning on pumpkins this year.
I thought about transplanting it into a separate pot. It didn’t belong with my cucumbers.
In the end, I just let it stay planted and watered that pumpkin vine with all the other vegetable plants in my garden. And it thrived.
So as I harvested my cucumbers, I also harvested the unexpected pumpkin in July.
Yes……July.
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God’s plan and timing are always the best and, in my experience, unexpected. I have structured carefully researched plans for the direction of a Bible study I’m leading, the lives of my children, or a garden patch. And I believe my plans are fantastic! I can even lay out a calendar for you. Then God steps into the space and says, “Oh…you’re so pretty. I’m going to do something different.”
I trust that His ways are higher. His thoughts are higher, right?
So when one of the women in the Bible study keeps hijacking the conversation or your child makes choices not on your list or a pumpkin vine grows in your cucumber patch,
Whatcha gonna do?
You’re going to water it with all of your other plans.
It’s August and my unexpected pumpkin is sitting by my front door.
It’s a good reminder to me and all the people who come to my door that God is the one really in charge. I just need to embrace the people, pray for the children, and pick the pumpkins God puts in my path.