Clearly the Author and Designer

Just got back from a Community Gardens information session and, though an amateur gardener, I can't wait to start a community garden here. As I sit and listen to the initiatives taking place across Hamilton, specifically in regards to community gardens, I am excited about the potential this city has for rejuvenation and health. The gardens all operate with different activities: growing food locally, creating more beautification across the city, bringing school curriculum together with gardening, intertwining gardening with public art, building relationships between markets and communities, creating opportunities for immigrants to grow their own food etc, but ultimately the outcome is the same - they build community. God is orchestrating so many neat initiatives. At the same time as this conversation about developing community gardens there are other conversations taking place. The Hamilton Roundtable for poverty reduction is looking at ways to address the issues of poverty, the city is increasingly motivated to invest in more community development, and there is a desire to see more activities that create 'community' like community gardens. I just leave these kinds of meetings smiling dumbly and shaking my head at how God is clearly the author and designer. How he is bringing certain themes, hopes, conversations, and realities together to influence and compliment each other, and lifting Hamilton out of a gloomy, hazey, fog of complacency and hopelessness, into a vital, flourishing city of beauty, peace, and restoration.