Before You Were Thirsty

“...I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” - Isaiah 43:19 NIV

Have you ever gone to water a plant and found it had already bloomed without you? You were not even watching, and there it was, fresh growth on its own schedule, not yours. Something in you smiles at that. The whole thing happened without your help, and somehow that is the most freeing thing about it.

God speaks into that moment when His people were convinced He had forgotten them. Not a rebuke, just a quiet question, “...do you not perceive it?” Provision was moving toward people before they knew they needed it. What He had set in motion was already springing up.

We’re on a journey together, learning to slow down and keep returning to that still place where God feels near, and something has been growing through every slow, quiet act of returning. But what if the source was never ours to begin with? Paul, writing to a generous church, said it plainly, that God, “...supplies seed to the sower and bread for food,” 2 Corinthians 9:10. He places the seed in our hands before we knew we were sowers, the way a meal appears before anyone thought to prepare it.

A crowd pressed Jesus once for a list of what God requires, and His answer surprised them. What God asks, Jesus said, is not a list at all, “...the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent,” John 6:29. A nineteenth century preacher named Spurgeon read that answer and found it liberating. The greatest thing we can do is cease from striving, resting in what He has done. We were never meant to be the source of the life that moves in us. His life flows through us the way sap moves through a branch, not from the branch’s effort but from the vine.

And He is not finished with us yet. Whatever feels stuck or distant right now is within reach of the One who, “...will not grow tired or weary,” Isaiah 40:28, and whose hands have never once turned away. He is not watching from a distance. He is at work in us, moving toward what we haven’t yet found words for.

Which means the striving was never the point. The fruit we have been anxious about, none of that was ever ours to coax into being. He was the gardener the whole time, working in what we could not see, providing what we had not thought to ask for. And He still is.

The plant bloomed while we were not watching. The stream was there before you were thirsty, and the seed was in His hand before you knew you were a sower. He was faithful through every moment we weren’t paying attention. What has been growing in us was never waiting on our effort. It was resting in His. Come and see.

Prayer

Father, we kept thinking we needed to bring something. Thank You that the seed was in Your hand the whole time. Forgive the striving and the wondering why nothing seemed to grow. You were here through all of it, working in what we could not see, providing what we had not yet learned to want. Teach us to rest in what You are doing. Amen.