Pioneers UK Blog

Confession time: I love my aloe plant. It was given to me by a friend when it was only about three inches high. I’ve watered it and repotted it, and every morning I make sure my bedroom curtains are open so it gets lots of sunlight. I have watched it grow from a wee spiky thing to, well, a slightly bigger spiky thing and have been amazed that something that started so small has grown so much, just sitting there day after day on my chest of drawers.

A few months ago, I started noticing other wee spiky things pushing through the soil. There were four of them in a wide circle around my aloe plant. “What is this?” I thought. “Aloe babies? I didn’t know my aloe was having babies!” And yet, there they were. Aloe babies, right there in the pot, encircling their mother like a tiny hedge.

I left the babies alone for a while, but over time they started to crowd their mum, so I decided to take a risk and uproot them, planting each in its own tiny pot. Now, instead of one aloe plant, I have five.

God has a way of speaking to me about himself through his creation, and my aloe plant is no exception. I was minding my own business, thinking I had one aloe plant. I looked after it as best as I knew how, but all the while, under the surface, things were happening that I couldn’t have imagined. For months, deep below my carefully mixed, succulent-friendly soil, my aloe was putting out roots. When conditions were right, the roots sprouted, sent up shoots, and in time four new aloe plants burst into the world. It was a total shock.

How often does God do things under the surface? Things that we have no clue about? Things we wouldn’t believe were possible, even if He told us? Pretty much all the time, in my experience!

If I think about it in terms of mission, I see God’s character revealed in my aloe plant even more. I imagine just about every missionary you know could tell you a story involving months or even years of praying for and ministering to and loving a group of people who seemed completely impervious to the gospel, only to have God surprise them with what He’d been doing all along under the surface. A hardened tribal leader surrenders to Christ. A household of unbelievers “suddenly” believes. A whole community is radically transformed practically overnight.

It has happened. And it will keep happening. Because God loves a surprise. He loves to see the delight on our faces, and feel the worship rising from our grateful hearts when he moves in ways we didn’t see coming.

I started with one aloe plant, and now I have five. If the aloe babies have babies, that makes twenty. Imagine what the world would be like if God were to multiply by five each prayer we pray for a lost loved one, each person who ventures onto the mission field, each pound we give in support of His work in the world? And what if those were multiplied by five, and so on and so on? It could happen, you know. He’s always working under the surface. And he’s done a lot more than that with much less.

Our job is to keep believing he’s going to move, even if we can’t see what’s going on under the surface. Our job is to water the soil, provide sunlight, and make sure conditions are favourable so that when He does show us what he’s been up to, we’re ready to act.

 
Photo by Clivid. CC license.