Let The Redeemed Of The Lord Say So

The Gardener who gardens
His plants by day,
shows His lovingkindness
in every way.

His garden is full
of promise and love,
which He gently harvests
with His gardening glove.

He helps each plant,
helps them grow,
even if they are
very, very slow.

He can make the biggest garden
out of the fewest seeds,
though gets bloody hands,
as He works among the weeds.

So, the Gardener hung
on this dreaded tree
and died to save His plants
at Calvary.

The spark has died out.
My heart is an empty hole. 
Let me die, let me die, 
yet still lives on my soul. 

I have been abandoned, 
lost at sea. 
The roaring waves – I can bear it no longer.
Let death take me. 

Even as the lily blooms, 
I’m lost at sea in pain.
The thunder booms, 
Let me die, I shall say again.

But what’s that? 
In the midst of the dark 
is a light, the dawn,
then the spark.

At the beginning of 8th grade two boys met and became friends. They became best friends. One was “born again.” The other knew who Jesus was…but not really.

The first boy came from a home with a Christian mother and an alcoholic father. The second boy came from a very moral home. 

I was newly married, had recently given birth to our first child, and lived far from home. I missed my family terribly. We were living in Montana at the time. My big brother was soon to be married in my hometown of Boise, and I desperately wanted to attend the wedding. 

(Ruth 2:12)

My story starts one summer morning as I drove my crew to Malott on an old school bus. I raised fruit in two locations, about five miles apart. Leaving the home place, we had to go down a steep grade of about 6% slope for almost a mile. About halfway down the hill, I discovered I had no brakes, nor could I shift to a lower gear. I looked in my rearview mirrors, and on the left side the tires had come out to the edge of the vehicle. 

I had a broken axle!

It was 1993. I was a member of the Security Forces in the U.S. Air Force stationed at Howard AFB, Panama. I was part of the Cobra Team, a small group that would go out on patrol in the jungle – almost exclusively at night – to intercept the never-ending stream of Panamanians trying to sneak on base and steal anything that wasn’t nailed down--lawnmowers, clothes dryers, aircraft parts, you name it; anything they might be able to use or sell. 

As we lay in the  ditch at night doing reconnaissance in the Panamanian jungle, my Security Forces buddy Joe let me know that he saw a group of about five locals coming from our right. They walked right past us, only a few feet away. Then a vehicle with its headlights on approached and they all jumped into the ditch. It was obvious they were up to no good.