Not everything that experiences darkness is lost. We may feel destroyed or overlooked. We may feel unseen and abandoned. But my conversation with a land that had been spiritually destroyed deepened my understanding of how God restores. If you’re dealing with the pain of waiting for someone to return to God, or to come to God, this will bring you peace.
Seeking the Spirit at a local arboretum
3:57 PM Friday, February 27th. I'm at the Muscatine Arboretum to talk to the guardian of the space, I hope, and the land itself. One of my observations, however, about arboretums is that they seem to be kind of an artificial way to showcase trees. They're a great place if you want to come talk to a tree, but the trees pretty much stand in isolation by themselves, not like they would in the woods where everything else is around them. But at least there are a lot of trees so they can communicate with one another and they have a community here.
I have come to a space kind of off to the side. I'm sitting down in a little valley where there's a very old, falling apart wooden chair that I'm sitting on. I always start with a prayer and I declare my intention and my identity and wait to see what the land has to say and what the spirit will share. And this is what it shared today.
God can restore from the deepest darkness
The land is rippling and alive. It moves in waves, although it seems to you to be stationary. This is because you move with it, although you do not perceive that you are moving with it. All land is living in this way. This is why you have seen beings come up from the land — because the land is alive. Nothing is stationary or static that is living. All things move, or they die.
Even Christ, who is in all and through all, moves and brings light and life to all. This is why he is even in the darkness. Because while you might think that the darkness is stationary and death, there is still light, even in the greatest depths and greatest degrees of darkness. There is still a little bit of light so that the darkness may choose, if it so chooses, to change its course, to reverse its action, to repent, and to return to light.
Sorcery left the land spiritually dead
This land has been set aside as a space where nature can gather and can be seen and be enjoyed. This particular place, though, is very barren. Energetically, there is not much here. It is quite dead.
Many eons ago, this land was populated with people. They knew how to work the land, but they chose not to. They knew how to live off the land, but they chose not to. Instead of choosing wholesome, recreational, good, light activities, they chose to practice sorcery and demonic activities. That is why this land feels dead to you — because it is spiritually dead. It has been raped, murdered, accosted, used for evil purposes. And so it is now dead.
I wonder: where is the light? Because I know that there is always light somewhere.
It is not yet time for this space to be remembered or recovered. So it simply sits and waits for its turn to be renewed, and found, and rejoined.
God's timing for restoration is always perfect
I love this message that nothing is forgotten, that there is a plan. God has a plan for us, for the land, for his people, for all of us, and there is a sequence to God's timing for restoration.
Some things are not lost, like this land. It's not lost. It's simply waiting for its appointed time. Some things don't need to be rescued yet.
Waiting doesn't mean that things have been forgotten.
If you are waiting for something, especially something that has been promised to you, you have not been forgotten. It just is not yet its appointed time to come forth.
God's time for renewal and for replenishment, and for recovering and for restoration is simply not the same as ours. Many things might be in a season of not yet.
The timing is God's. There is order in his kingdom. All will be redeemed when the time is right. Not when we think the time is right, or not when we want it, but when he knows it's right. I especially love how the lesson from this land and this story holds true when we struggle with loved ones who have left the church or loved ones who haven't even accepted God or faith.
But God has a plan. Now, of course, the land is different from people. People get to choose the light or the dark. We have agency, the land does not have that agency, so if people use it for darkness, the land is then destroyed spiritually, as in the case of this land. The land must then be brought back to life by light, by one who is able to do so.
Tough times: waiting for God's timing to restore
The lesson for us is that how we use our agency to bring about light or dark in this world has greater repercussions than we might realize. Since we have agency, we can choose to move toward the light or the dark.
If someone we love has left the church or hasn't chosen God, or maybe has turned their back on him, the most difficult thing that we might have to do is to wait. They have used their agency already, and I cannot use my agency to bring them back. I can't force someone to make a different choice.
The way that you can use yours is to continue to shine your light. To be that light, to share, to have charity, to have love, to be patient. You are exercising your faith. By waiting in this way, by loving them where they are and giving them the opportunity to choose.
That's what this land teaches us. The land is not passive. It's not weak, it's not defeated. It's simply waiting because it's not the thing that has the power to restore it.
We have power to put forth our light, but we are not the ones who have power to restore all things. That is for God, that is for Jesus, and they know the timing. What we are here to do is stay in the light and wait and trust, and that is how we endure.
We allow God's timing to work in everyone's life at the pace it needs to, not just in our own lives.
What would it mean if you were able to trust that nothing in God's kingdom, nothing in his creations are lost, but maybe just waiting?
