There is this incredible and mysterious place in California that both mystifies and fills me with wonder and awe.
It is called Death Valley National Park.
You’re probably wondering why on earth a place with the name of “Death Valley” would be something that I would love….me a self-professed lover of all things creation, nature and green life! Afterall, this place is nothing spectacular to look at. It is the lowest, driest and seemingly least exciting place in North America. Most people know it as basically a barren landscape that is devoid of life and color. When you gaze out over the desert landscape, it is the same story for miles:
emptiness with no change.
Maybe that description Sounds too familiar to you as I know it does for me.
I know so many people who feel like they dwell in their own wilderness with no color or growth or hope for change. Just miles of dry bleak nothingness. Maybe some of you are waiting in this Christmas Advent for a break in your dire landscape, maybe you are waiting for a reason to Hope in a particular desperation, or you are weary of the same despairing circumstances that greet you with every sunrise.
You wonder if you can ever expect for a newness of joy to break through again in an area of your life, or possibly your whole life story.
We all need a reason to HOPE.
I understand this sorrow-filled wandering. I understand this waiting posture of wondering. Wondering with weariness if you could ever possibly hope for a shift. A shift that you feel may never come to your circumstance.
Where is the hope that we wait for?
But creation can teach us more than any sermon ever could.
And this barren wasteland, called Death Valley, can teach us something about a buried, unseen, yet palpable, hope that could quench our thirsty and dry soul as you walk your own wilderness.
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. (Romans 1:20)
On the surface, when you look at the cracked dry earth of Death Valley it can be pretty depressing and non-exciting to look at with it’s miles of rocky, dry and dusty wasteland. But, there is a secret about this desert of death….a truth that I just unearthed about a beautiful and incredible miracle that happens there under the deep, dry, dark earth.
When I learned about the wonders that rarely happens in this bleak landscape, my heart was drawn to this special phenomena.
Because, I believe that our hearts are supernaturally
drawn to the HOPE that we were created for.
Only about once a decade, there is this amazing miracle called a “Super Bloom” that happens in this dry desert! Doesn’t that sound incredible. Want to know more? I know I did when I heard about a place where life can grow and overcome and rise above the deathly and dire conditions of emptiness.
Basically, an explosion of life happens in this desert land!!
The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a wildflower. (Isaiah 35:1)
A breakthrough of color and life and beauty literally pushes up and busts through through the hard, rocky earth, and it is incredibly wondrous and breath-taking and awe-filled scene for just a few days. It is a glimpse of eternal spring (Well, from the photos I have seen…. my dream is to go one day and see it for myself!)
Have a look for yourself:
So what is up with this floral phenomenon? How does such an explosion of LIFE happen in such a wasteland known for DEATH?
Well, I dug further and had to know what was responsible for such an unnatural super bloom of life where life is known to not survive or grow. Though the explosion of color only lasts a few days, it is a miracle nonetheless that life can grow where life is NOT suppose to grow!
It is a change to a hopeless scenery that births a special Newness of Joy.
But, how does this actually happen in a desert? How does LIFE grow where there is not suppose to be life?
A perfect storm precedes a miracle of LIFE.
I found out that this can only happen when there is basically a “perfect storm”…a certain weather pattern called, El Nino. Ok, I had some years of Spanish class in my life and I knew right away what El Nino meant. I also knew that El Nino is a rare weather pattern of perfect storm conditions that bring unusual amounts of rain… El Nino means the Child in Spanish! WHAT!!!?
Listen to this description from The National Ocean Service Website:
El Niño means The Little Boy, or Christ Child in Spanish. El Niño was originally recognized by fishermen off the coast of South America in the 1600s, with the appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean. The name was chosen based on the time of year (around December) during which these warm waters events tended to occur.
The term El Niño refers to the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central Equatorial Pacific.
Did it blow your mind like it did mine!!!!!???
You guys, THE CHILD!! THE LITTLE BOY at Christmas!!!!! I was undone when I let my heart unlock to this truth that God was showing us through creation. A truth that mirrors our truth which rescues us all from our desert landscapes.
When I made the connection, my breath was taken away and I just wept right there at my laptop. Can there be a more powerful sermon than when God preaches from His own creation?!
Basically El Nino makes an appearance and rains down so much life-giving water that tiny dormant seeds which have been tucked deeply into the dark earth (over 16 inches deep) are able to be birthed to New Life. These hidden treasures, that no one sees, are buried away in the broken places of this rocky soil for years and years, and this PERFECT STORM of Rain enables the hidden seed to finally bust open and germinate and rise up through the dry earth towards the sunlight with a show of color and awe and NEW LIFE and HOPE….
A change of view. A new sight. A shift of perspective.
It is a beautiful glimpse into what God can do with our most deadly and tragic stories of loss and hopelessness and grief and weariness of soul.
He can bring LIFE FROM DEATH.
Creation points to a Creator.
God’s pulpit is HIS creation.
My Life since losing my GiaBia on April 22, 2018, has felt like I was catapulted to a foreign desert. A dry wilderness, a wasteland and a planet where the shadows of death daily suck the life out of me. Living with grief, and without my baby holding my hand, feels like an eternal wandering in a wasteland with no hope for a shift or change. It is easy to lose heart when all you feels is a valley of death and dry bones.
How do we even take another step with the weight of such grief blanketing us with the heaviness of loss every day?
What gives us hope to take another breath, another brave step, and to believe that there can be HOPE and LIFE and COLOR again?
I look to the Child. I fall on the chest of El Nino and give him all my tears. I give HIM all my broken places. He knows these broken places. He is no stranger to the wilderness.
Afterall, the wilderness was HIS pathway to our HOPE!
I have found that, in my greatest lament, my Jesus sings a louder song of TRUTH that binds of the broken pieces of my shattering heart. And, remembering the TRUTH of my mighty Jesus changes everything. His Truth is the balm to my broken places.
It says in the bible that He records EVERY sorrow and saves every tear.
Those tears are watering the deeply buried seeds of my shaky faith that will bust through the graves of death.
Death is never the end to those who BELIEVE!
He turns a desert into pools of water, and a dry land into flowing springs.
(psalm 107:35)
Truth Changes everything.
A CHILD CHANGES EVERYTHING.
It is only the promise of our Mighty Savior being born in a manger over 2000 years ago, that I can hold on to a LIVING breathing and active, renewing Hope that Life will win.
This holy child, who lowered himself to become less… Less for us, purchased a promise of a SUPER BLOOM eternity for us.
He got Low for US….He dug into our dry wasteland to break open HOPE.
Our precious King child chose to dive into the dirty, rocky and desolate soil of our broken earth and bear the sins of the world for us. He chose to bleed to death on a broken tree to bring LiFE to us in our broken garden wasteland. He endured the most perfect storm of all History to take on our punishment of HELL to purchase a SUPER coming- BLOOM of ETERNAL LIFE for us, for those who accept His gift of Love and life.
His perfect storm of LOVE became actual newness of LIFE breaking through our wasteland for us!
His agonizing death becomes the breakthrough of HOPE for us.
A CHILD CHANGES EVERYTHING!
His sacrificial blood rains down on our most desolate deep and dire places to feed the deep seeds buried under the weight of our grief and circumstances to bloom new life and love within our desert ruins. Take heart, wait. There is a change coming.
We have a hope coming!
Advent says GOD IS NOT DONE!
The Story was not over when the Garden of Eden broke and sin entered our world.
The story was not over when God came down in the manger in Bethlehem.
The story was not over when He was whipped and tortured up the road to Calvary.
The story was not over when He bled to death on a cross and carried our punishment to descend into the depths of HELL.
The story was not over when He was carried to a dark garden tomb and the world went dark and wept with an echo of death and despair and hopelessness in the air.
All that was heard was the stillness of what felt like A Death Valley. No Change. No Shift. Seemingly done.
A story that is seemingly DONE.
The story was not done.
seemingly hopeless….until, A Child’s Perfect Storm broke the dormant seeds of thousands of years of waiting in prophecy promised.
THE STONE SHIFTED!
JESUS BROKEN OPEN THE TOMB of the greatest wasteland!
A perfect storm raged a battle against the pits of HELL in that dark cave and our mighty Jesus stomped on Satan’s head, crushed the enemy and broke through the garden tomb and the rock was rolled away and there was NEW LIFE.
He is working in the most broken and dark, hidden places.
OUR SAVIOR BLOOMED INTO NEW LIFE!!!!
He does miracles in our darkest and deadliest tombs of this earth. The grave can not hold our Jesus.
THE GRAVE is not the end of the story!
Our Master Gardener is the only ONE who can bring LIFE from death. He crushed death with the SUPER BLOOM of our Savior!
This is the Goodness of the CHRIST Child that hunts us down in our desert land of despair.
When you find yourselves in the shadow of your own death Valley where you can see no life, no green, and no hope remember this:
A Child Changes Everything.
When you find yourself in an absolutely devastating pit that feels like the dry cracked earth can swallow you whole…remember the Perfect storm of LOVE that rains down the water of HOPE.
When you feel heavy with grief…. and I know this wilderness. I know this pain. I know this sorrow.
Remember: A Child Changes EVERYTHING!
Our Powerful and Mighty God, the one who conquered death once and for all, gives LIVING HOPE to our lowest and driest places of death and despair and weariness.
He reaches down in the valley of dry bones and He weeps tears with us into our dormant seeds of hope to birth new life from our greatest pains and our greatest losses.
He is our hope gained.
The empty garden tomb is our evidence.
He has proven to us that He will stop at nothing to break through the Death Valleys of our hearts to grow new Life and Hope and color where there is no color and no life for the eyes to see.
Just asHe brings a SHOW of color and Life in Death Valley desert of California where there was no life at all, he is working in the deepest darkest pits of our lives too. He is never DONE. The empty Tomb is our proof. Life wins.
He makes ALL things NEW. Take heart, A Restored Garden is coming!
HE gives birth from death. Death is not the end for HIM. He RAINS on the deeply buried seeds of faith and explodes HOPE to our deepest and most broken valleys of our lives.
This is my Rescue minute by minute living without my baby on earth.
THIS IS MY HOPE.
I know Hope changes everything.
He will harvest new life from my depths of hellish hurt.
The Super Bloom of Eternity is our lens. Loss is but gain.
I will embrace my baby again! This is my SUPER BLOOM coming that will never fade away! This is ALL of our SUPER BLOOMS coming!
THIS is the gospel that saves our weary hearts every day. This is the promise that waters the tiny seeds of faith and hope tucked deeply under the rocks of our dry, cracked, broken and dead gardens to create a coming promise of beauty and newness and LIFE and GREEN color. This is the incredible storm of a miracle that gives life from death.
A baby changes everything. El Nino Changes Everything.
Jesus came as a little child to RAIN down on us in the most driest and dire of circumstances. His redeeming love drenches our most broken hearts and we find that this truth breaks through the driest places and brings glimpses of new Life that we can hold on to.
What does a super bloom of hope look like?
Sometimes, when our eyes are open and our hearts are soft to His mysterious ways, we can get actual tangible glimpses of that coming redemption and new life here on earth now. Sometimes, if we allow our hearts to stay tender, we get the earthly miracles now as a peek into KINGDOM coming! It is a beautiful thing to peek beyond the veil to a greater story of HOPE.
Everyday I pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven is earth made new. Our future is a new Earth with a tree of Life that never dies… a tree that brings forever healing!
But, sometimes we do not get sight or healing or full restoration here on earth, do we?
sometimes we feel like we will forever sit in a broken, frozen and dead winter garden.
Sometimes it feels like nothing changes and morning will never dawn in one/all or any area of our lives. We do not get our happy earthly outcome. We get a “No.” We get a diagnosis. We get a broken relationship. We get a dead child. We get a rejection. We get depression. We get a divorce. We get an unfair judgement. We get a prodigal child. We lose our job. We get a crappy season that beats us up and leaves us bleeding in a pit of what feels like HELL. We get a faith-filled, sweating bloody prayer unanswered. We get a bitter cup that is not passed from us. We get a drink of the deep deep cup of sorrow. We get a feeling of hopelessness.
We get Death Valley. All our human eyes see is an empty space.
But, our Truth says that when we can’t see a change, we can BELIEVE for a change and that turns on our HOPE which changes everything. Sometimes it is a radical shift, sometimes it is a gradual change. But, we have a LIVING breathing HOPE which means our situation is never stagnant. Never dead.
EVERYTHING can be touched and transformed with the rays of LIVING HOPE.
I want to resolve to see with new eyes. To look deeper into the broken and lifeless ground for the miracles of change and possibility. To see a Spring Garden coming, even in the winter season of my soul.
I want to take a hold of the Risen Savior’s Storm of Love.
A child changes everything. A storm of LOVE descends on our Valleys of Death. We are never without HOPE because of a promise buried where no one can steal from us!
LOVE rains down.
Love unlocks the dormant seeds of faith and breaks the hard outer shells to reveal new life.
And because Jesus conquered death, deep HOPE is ours!
When we can not see the super bloom here on earth with human eyes, We have to go to the storm of love that was nailed to the cross. We have to dig deeper with a supernatural shovel. We have to see through the lens of resurrection. We have to go to the empty garden tomb and touch the rolled away rock that our Savior BROKE THROUGH! We have to reach up for HOPE.
We have to touch the promise of NEW LIFE.
And, hope does not always look like a change of circumstances. Sometimes our Living HOPE looks more like an internal shift in our our wastelands of our hearts. Sometimes Hope looks like new sight. Sometimes Hope looks like an aching surrender that opens our arms wide to receive a new goodness birthed from deep loss and pain.
Hope can be a change in our perspective. A change in our sight. A change in our hearts. A change in our story.
HOPE is ours for the having even when our circumstances do not change.
There is a SUPER BLOOM of ETERNAL JOY coming that will not fade (like the Super Bloom in Death Valley, California) and it is not dependent on circumstances. This explosion of NEW LIFE will last forever and ever and all death and tears will be gone forever!
THIS IS OUR LIVING HOPE and this is what saves us in the deepest wastelands of our souls when nothing in our human sight gives life to a dead weight on our hearts. We have to EXPECT redeeming LIFE. In our deepest sorrow, our ears can open to a hear a louder song that can bind up our broken places. We have to pray for the courage to choose to see beyond the veil and allow the TRUTH of our Jesus’ promise to seep into our rocky hearts and cradle all our desert broken places within our aching soul.
He breaks through.
We just have to wait.
He is not done.
Life is coming.
When you are waiting for a prize, your heart will do the work to HOPE in the valley, because HOPE is an active pressing forward towards our promised reward! Hope rises us to a new bravery and beholding of unseen goodness ahead.
We behold the prize, even in our desert places!
No longer victims, we are victors!
I love what Peter says about the LIFE that is ahead for us! We can expect NEW life from our LIVING redeeming GOD! We just have to hold on with GREAT EXPECTATION!
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, 4 and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. 5 And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad.There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. 7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. 9 The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3-9)
There is a breaking through coming, and not a fading one, but a permanent change….a shooting up in the rocky places of our lives. Sometimes, we get a holy glimpse, sometimes it’s just a season of an oasis in our desert to gives us the palpable encouragement we need. But, we get these previews of a SUPER BLOOM coming that will never ever fade away! We get trailers of the perfect happy ending that will be our forever eternal beginning to a story of HOPE.
There is HOPE in every situation because of our LIVING HOPE! Because Jesus Broke through the most hellish wasteland, all our wastelands have HOPE for a newness of LIFE and that is truth of goodness that hunts us down!
Every heart is a landscape that HE can bloom with new life.
I don’t know about you, but my heart craves wholeness and healing like never before and I know I have a promise in all my ache that He will make all things NEW on the shores of eternity where all pain is gone forever. This promise does not fix pain or heal grief or take away sorrow, but this promised LOVE storm of HOPE propels me forward to bravely dig for JOY and to turn pain into purpose. Living under the raining truth of HOPE keeps my eyes open to HIS kingdom here on earth.
I will keep my eyes open for the trailers, the revelations, the miracles, the phenomenons, the hidden and sometimes obvious glimpses into the ways that He breaks through the rocky places and gives snapshots of Kingdom Coming.
I will dig for seeds that are busting through!
Hints of the NEW CREATION breaking through this broken world. Glimpses of LIFE OVERCOMING DEATH. Snapshots of God’s redeeming power to bring purpose from our greatest pain.
This sure promise unlocks a fierce determination in my soul to bear witness to the ways He brings goodness from the most painful stories.
I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD (Psalm 27:13-14)
Glimpses of healing to come! And, even if I do not see these changes now, I will wait in Advent for the ultimate change coming. Let’s resolve to wait together in our wastelands for a HOPE coming!!
Redemption is ours.
Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me.. (Rev. 22:12a)
Where our eyes can not see, we know that we know a perfect storm Child is watering the seeds to bring BLOOMING LIFE! He is the God who can take what evil meant for harm and birth open a new goodness. He is never done.
Our hearts can wait in HOPE for our buried seeds of faith to be watered with HIS TRUTH. We can witness a supernatural shift to the ground of our desolate hearts.
Just like El Nino Swoops through Death Valley, California and brings a radical changes of New Life and JOY and growth and color that no human could manipulate!
The Resurrection promise changes everything!
He will make all things NEW! We can grow forward in this promise!
Creation sings HIS Truth!
I read somewhere that we will get to heaven and be amazed about how much it resembles earth’s wonder and beauty in creation…except there will be no evil, no sorrow, and no tears. ONLY A SUPER BLOOM of life that never dies! Restored Trees of Life with leaves for forever healing! Take a look at Revelations 22, it is all there. A promise coming!
So maybe, like me in the advent of your waiting and weary souls, you need to be reminded today of the story that is not done. A story that is breaking open the deep underground rocky soil in your own death valley. His story is always a story of HOPE that explodes seeds of new life, because He conquered HELL and the garden tomb is empty. HE IS ALIVE and He is birthing NEW LIFE in every area of our lives!
For the believer there is hope beyond the grave, because Jesus Christ has opened the door to heaven for us by His death and resurrection.” -Billy Graham
Come, Jesus…. We know that in our deepest valley, you are NEVER DONE! Your super, death-crushing power of Resurrection life busts through our harshest conditions and blooms NEW LIFE and LOVE….. and that keeps our hearts fertile with hope.
We will wait with HOPE. A SURE LIVING HOPE! My heart will be still and believe YOU ARE NEVER DONE.
Our story is one of BLOOMING LIFE from a SUPER GOD!
Because…. El Nino rains on our most thirsty parched deserts of our hearts.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (JOhn 4:13-14)
A perfect storm of love changes everything.
A Christ Child STORM OF LOVE Changes everything.
We ache for things unseen, we HOPE for our future redemption, we drink from the well that won’t run dry!
One way that we have seen new life and hope has been through our Gianna’s legacy. Please see our fundraiser on Facebook going on currently to help us grow seeds of miracles in honor of Gianna Lilyfaith! Will you come alongside up to bear witness to blooming life from the pains of loss! Love from love. A legacy of light!
God is never done.
A CHILD CHANGES EVERYTHING! <3