A Time To Pluck Up

 Do you remember the marigolds from this summer? These marigolds have taught me so much.

I am sad to say that this past weekend I pulled up the marigolds. 

It is crazy to me that these gigantic flowers came from a small seed. They were once beautiful orange and yellow flowers that came from a small seed. The joy these flowers brought our family and the lessons that they taught us are now dead and, quite frankly, not beautiful anymore but even in their death a lesson still remained. I had the opportunity to be the speaker at our women’s Masquerade Night at Southridge Church. I taught from Ecclesiastes 3 and the seasons that occur in life. We learned that there is a time for mourning and a time to laugh, a time to weep and a time to dance, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing and there is a season to plant and a season to pluck up. We then learned that God has caused these things so that we could stand in awe before Him. 

“How can we stand in awe of God in the plucking up season, the mourning season and the weeping season?” is what I found myself asking as I studied this scripture. Here I was, just a few days later, plucking up my adored marigolds. I joked that the next time I spoke it should only be on the laughing, dancing and embracing parts. As I tugged, pulled and got dirt under my fingernails I was sad to say goodbye; however, the barren flower bed was full of seeds. I was hoping these seeds would settle in the dirt during the slumber of winter and grow into something beautiful once again. 

As I shared in a previous blog post, now our family is being plucked up. It is a painful experience to be plucked up and moved but my prayer is that we will see the seeds that were sown and fruit will be ripened as we leave and are planted somewhere else. You’d better believe I have gathered some of these marigold seeds for planting at our new home. There is a season for everything - mourning, laughing, weeping, dancing, embracing, refraining from the embrace, planting and plucking up and I am learning that in every season we can stand in awe of our God, even when we are the ones experiencing being plucked up. Through this time I have felt God’s hands and though it is a season of pain and plucking up I know that He will not leave us uprooted but will then place us with His loving hands into a new soil. 

Written by: Erin Coker

Edited by: Candi Marler