POMEGRANATE PROMISES

I wrote this piece over 2 years ago...it’s good to hold yourself accountable to what it is you’re believing for. It’s a kind of glorious grace to be able to look back and revel in God’s faithfulness, His absolute loving-kindness.

When I wrote this, all I had in my hands were pomegranate seeds...Today, I hold our miracle girl Nova’s hand in my one hand, and our promise girl, Vida in the other.

Here it is:

Ever wondered why the fruit of the pomegranate is so safely tucked away, protected, difficult to get to?

And when you try to rush the process of getting to the fruit, you inevitably spoil some of it, and don’t get to enjoy it in its fullness?

Pomegranates are unusual as they have no flesh, only seeds...the fruit is the seeds.

Much like the fruit we’re waiting for, like prayers we’re waiting to have answered, the breakthrough isn’t only in the answered prayer, but in the faith seeds we’ve planted in the time we’ve been praying, hoping, believing, trusting.

The outward appearance of the pomegranate is not necessarily a very good precursor to the juice-filled ruby-coloured jewels you’re guaranteed to find on the inside.

Prayers aren’t always pretty, poetically versed lines. Sometimes they’re raw, ugly, even desperately uttered through clenched teeth, and quivering voices. Sometimes they’re all we have left when the world says there’s no hope, when you’ve given up, but your soul isn’t done fighting.

When pomegranates are cared for and tended to, when they are truly ready-they burst open and their seeds break through! They. break. through!

And when we have the patience to get through the tough exterior, and delicately extract the sweet fruit-seeds, we realize the time and patience given to the exercise was well worth it.

So is the promise of unanswered prayers. They’re just waiting to fill your life with the kind of sweet fragrance that only hope realised can.

When we have the faith to stick it through, to keep praying those prayers, to hope, in the face of what seems like defeat, we’ll eventually realize it was well worth it.

We realise the time that seems to pass so slowly while we wait for breakthrough has actually produced a fruit so much sweeter than if we were able to pick it and enjoy it the moment we wanted it.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but hope realised brings it to life, it shocks it back into its life- giving rhythm!

I have hope for prayers still unanswered, 6 year old prayers, tired prayers at times, the hum drum of the same words said with at times a quivering, shaken hope, and at other times said with a hope so strong, it surprises even me.