Embrace Your AlmostSample

Plant in Faith. Root in Love.

When my husband and I moved to a new home, we tried our hand at gardening again. For some reason, the words plant in faith; root in love played on repeat in my mind as I placed the starter plants and seeds in the soil.

Plant in faith. To plant is to have faith that your garden will bear fruit at just the right time. Maybe that’s what God was asking me to do with my dreams—to show up, prepare the soil, plant in faith, hope in what was unseen, and then trust that fruit would come at just the right time.

Root in love. As I stood there in my old overalls with the sun beating down, it dawned on me. We fight lies not only by pulling them out but also by rooting ourselves in love.

Bible verses I had studied came to mind: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Somehow, in that sacred moment in the dirt, I realized that in all my dreaming and striving, I was longing for something deeper. I was longing for Eden—heaven, a garden of life, wholeness—the fullness of God.

In this life between two gardens—the Garden of Eden and eternity with God—I could reach every milestone, achieve every dream, and still feel incomplete if I was not rooted in Love. And love isn’t just a feeling or a choice. It’s God (see 1 John 4:8).

Perhaps that’s why, when we get what we want—the car, the spouse, the promotion—the finish line moves. The satisfaction we thought we’d feel doesn’t come. We just long for the next thing, always feeling almost where we want to be. Maybe that’s because we were never meant to find fulfillment through even the greatest things in this world.

We were made for something even greater. We were made for God.

God, I want to be planted in faith and root myself in love. Help me know what this looks like when it comes to my big and small plans in life today. Amen.