The good soil.

This week, I have "woken up" - after the craziness of moving,  adjusting and learning a new job.  I finally had time to sit and think - too much time for my liking:)  And, I realized that I am starting all over again - and I don't know exactly where I am going from here - but I am going and I am growing.  I thought about the "good soil" in the parables, and how my experience in Africa had changed my "soil" so much. These experiences have shifted my view of events, things, people and places in America.  Everything looks a little different now, the "plant" I was before Africa is far different from the plant I am becoming now.  This feeling reminded me of a part of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."

I want to encourage you, and myself - to continue allowing God to dig up our "soil" or to renovate our "house," to continue to make it into better and better.  My soil didn't look like this a year ago - and I hope it will look totally different from this in a year from now - and that is good - because God is good.  Allow Him to change you today.