Where God Hides the Life

How a single flower reveals the difference between tending and becoming

By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

The stem of coreopsis leaning out from the prairie hangs just far enough into the mowed path to catch your attention. It doesn’t force itself into view or demand anything from you. It simply reaches, bridging two worlds without making a scene. People come to the garden because of the structured beds, the clean rows, and the predictable rhythm of cultivating vegetables. That order feels safe and familiar. It matches what they believe they’re looking for — something they can manage, something they can understand, something that makes sense.

The raised beds become the doorway. They are what draw people near, settling their nerves long enough for something deeper to begin working beneath the surface. The garden meets their expectations, giving them a sense of grounding and place before anything spiritual, emotional, or transformative ever rises to the surface. But behind that structure is a completely different world — one that doesn’t advertise itself, one that doesn’t need tidy borders or human oversight to make sense. That world is the prairie.

The prairie carries a different kind of life. It doesn’t need to be tended to be full. It doesn’t need to be arranged to be meaningful. It grows as it was created to grow: freely, faithfully, in rhythms older than any gardener’s hand. Seeds fall where they land. Roots navigate the dark without instructions. Insects weave homes no one notices. Everything in the prairie is becoming — without filter, without pressure, without asking permission. It is unfiltered becoming. It is the raw honesty of creation doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Most people assume the tidy garden beds are the main attraction, but they are only the introduction. They give people what they think they’re here for so the prairie can eventually give them what they’re actually hungry for. The garden teaches tending. The prairie teaches identity. The mowed path builds confidence. The unmowed field builds surrender. Structure draws them in, but the wild is what grows them up.

Once a person feels received by the garden — once the soil has settled something in them, quieted their mind, and given them room to breathe — the prairie begins its long, patient pull. It doesn’t insist. It doesn’t call loudly. It simply exists, waiting behind everything, knowing that when someone is ready, they will turn around and discover the world that has been forming life in silence the entire time. This is where real formation happens. Not in the neat rows, but in the unmanicured places. Not in the parts we control, but in the spaces we release. Not in the filtered versions of ourselves, but in the unfiltered becoming happening beneath the surface.

That is why the coreopsis matters. It stretches out from the wild into the known, bridging the order of the path and the abundance of the prairie. It stands on the seam, not to impress but to invite. Its presence whispers, “There is more here. Look past what you can manage.” It doesn’t diminish the path or the raised beds. Instead, it reveals that they are only the beginning. The deeper work — the Kingdom work — is taking place in the places untouched by human certainty.

The doorway is the garden.
The formation is the prairie.
And the invitation is the flower leaning across the line.

It stands right where the two worlds meet, reminding us that the truest becoming — the honest, Spirit-breathed kind — is never filtered, never manicured, and never rushed. It waits in the wild spaces behind us, ready to be discovered the moment we’re willing to turn and see where life has been happening all along.