"LATE BLOOMERS"

“LATE BLOOMERS”

Here’s me with my volunteer tomato plant. It’s been growing since April and now is taller than I am! All this time, it has been flowering, but no fruit. Then early last week, I saw one tiny tomato, and then today, when I looked, I saw ten! I was so delighted and figured it just must be a late bloomer. Some of us are late bloomers too. I didn’t even start my full-time art career here in Las Vegas until I was 45 years old. So if you are someone who hasn’t quite figured out what you want to be when you grow up or you are still searching for your greatness, don’t worry, God hasn’t forgotten about you. Biblically you are in good company.

Exodus tells us: “And Moses was fourscore years old [80], and Aaron fourscore and three years old when they spake unto Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:7). And that was just the beginning of the story of bringing God’s people out of Egypt and into the promised land.

Abraham was 75 years old when God called him. “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee’” (Gen. 12:1). And it wasn’t until he was 100 years old that he had his first son Isaac.

Psalm 103:5 tells us that God “satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”  Beyond renewing our bodies with perhaps new things we are to eat, our Lord is also able and willing to renew our youthful enthusiasm, and excitement about new things. He certainly can give us new strength to take on things we’ve never done before. Can you even imagine what it was like for Abraham, at age 99, finding out that he was going to learn how to be a father? Or with Moses, that he was going to do miracles and wonders with a stick from an almond tree? How weird and new was that?!

So don’t worry if your life looks like it may not be progressing as you imagined or hoped. God has many signs and wonders in the future for all of us. With age comes constant renewal and new adventures, new challenges, and new blessings. Maybe we’re like my tomato plant—we need a lot of extra time to grow and flower, but when the fruit comes, WOW, it overflows!

Our youth is as young as the Spirit of God within us, and Spirit has no age 😊.

Love, Carolyn