Flaming Rose

Hosea 10:12-13 "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love and break up your unplowed ground for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness upon you. But you have planted wickedness, you have reaped evil, you have eaten the fruit of deception. Because you have depended on your own strength and many warriors."

I really wish I wasn't depriving myself of sleep to write this, but as the whipped cream melts into the hot chocolate and the hot chocolate becomes chocolate milk I must make this brief....

There are so many wonderful things in these two verses that, if my mind were to put thoughts together properly and keep them in there, I could write pages upon pages. But one thing I wanted to point out was the mention of the unplowed ground. Unplowed ground, especially if it is extremely hard, cannot receive all of the necessary moisture or nutrients necessary for farming. In order to plow this ground, something hard and heavy (i.e. a plow) must be used to dig in and expose what is inside. If we are to reap this fruit of unfailing love, we must plow the land of our hearts. Not what has already been turned over, but we must plow what has never been touched. If the land had feelings when it was plowed you would hear it groan in pain as the horses drug the plow across its surface. But it would feel much better when the rain comes and it is able to do so much more for the crops it yeilds. And so it is with our hearts. There are things in our lives which we have kept to ourselves and allowed no one else to touch. To allow that "dirt" to be dug in when it has never been touched is at first difficult to access. Then it is hard and painful to let what it is that is plowing to dig in our hearts and expose what is within us. But because this is exposed, we are able to absorb more of the "showers of rightousness" that God has already been trying to rain on our lives. Sure unlplowed land can still get wet, but it is only when it has been plowed that what has been planted within it can trully grow to its full potential.

This is something that I've been learning in my life lately through experiences and it was just now shown to me in this verse. This verse actually has a lot to do with what God has been showing me in my life over the past few years and I've just been able to get to the point of plowing my unplowed ground- looking at aspects of myself that I wanted to leave in that meadow behind the woods. Though I knew the meadow was there and I could retreat to it every now and again, it was not doing me any good. But now the ground is really being broken and I will seek the Lord until he comes.

I will try to speak more on this verse later...
And "Flaming Rose" is what we're thinking about naming the videography business...