A Month for Great and Magnificent Things!

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
For the LORD is the great God,
And the great King above all gods.
Psalm 95:1-3 (NKJV)

It's August!

I had already planned, during this month, to focus on some of the miracles and awesome things of God recorded in the Bible. This morning the thought came to me to look up the origin of the word "August" and I was surprised at what I found. I knew the month itself was named after one of Roman emperors, Augusta, but the name itself goes deeper.

August is a somewhat popular baby name, and in checking name sites, I found the name means great and magnificent. Hey, I like that! Our God is definitely great and magnificent and how fitting to explore His greatness and magnificence during this month.

A little further digging revealed more from another site: the word has Latin origins that means dignified and holy. One of its adjective derivatives 'augere' means to increase.

Okay. I proclaim this a month of experiencing the Greatness and Magnificence of a Holy and Dignified God, who will show Himself mightily through areas of Increase.

This is what I'm believing God to be and to do in my life this month. Great and mighty things.

Grab that expectation by faith and its yours as well!

This month started off fittingly with me having my own little miracle this morning!

I have pumpkins growing in my garden!

So why is this a miracle?

First off, I live in the desert. To get anything other than desert native plants to grow here, you have to labor with the soil. For those who live in areas where you can throw a seed in the ground and forget about it and have wonderful things pop up all over the place...that rule doesn't apply here. Nothing grows without a huge investment of sweat-equity.

Second, pumpkins grow through pollination. You must have bees to pollinate the female flowers at the right time, or they have to be hand-pollinated. I learned this when I started with the vegetable garden last year. I don't take it lightly that we've had lots of bees around our garden this year. I prayed for them, and I thank God they are here to do the pollination way better than I can.

Another thing that amazes me...I checked the pumpkin patch Tuesday, just a few days ago, to see if there were any female flowers (there were plenty of males!) and I didn't see any, nor did a cursory review reveal any budding pumpkins, but today, they are definitely there!

So why even bother with growing things when it's so difficult to do so?

There are two main reasons we're growing this garden...no three.

It's a life lesson. It's doable. It's difficult, but doable. A lot like things in life. All the conditions may not be perfect to achieve something, and it will require more work to do it, but you can enjoy the fruits of your labor if you just go ahead and labor with it.

Two: I want to have a community garden where kids in the neighborhood can learn to grow things, and also benefit from the life's lesson of difficult, but doable. And kids like pumpkin patches. So the garden for these two years is our serving as our proving ground.

Three: We get to eat our own homegrown stuff!