The Garden on Burnside Avenue

In 2011, Ron Finley stood staring at a neglected strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the curb on Burnside Avenue in South Central Los Angeles. The city called it a parkway. Neighbors called it a dumping ground. Weeds choked through broken glass. Trash collected in the gutters like driftwood after a flood.

Finley did something absurd. He planted vegetables.

Sunflowers climbed six feet tall where fast-food wrappers had piled up. Tomato vines sprawled across soil that had only ever known cigarette butts and neglect. Kids who had never eaten a fresh strawberry pulled them warm off the stem. Neighbors who hadn't spoken in years knelt together in the dirt, planting kale.

The city actually cited him for gardening without a permit. He fought it and won. Today, dozens of community gardens bloom across South Central — tangible proof that one act of planting can transform an entire landscape.

This is exactly the promise the Almighty makes through Isaiah. His Word falls like rain on barren ground, and it does not return empty. It accomplishes precisely what He sends it to do. Where thorns once grew, cypresses rise. Where briers choked out life, myrtle trees take root. God's Word enters the waste places of our lives — the neglect, the brokenness, the hard-packed soil of disappointment — and it produces something living, something beautiful, something that endures. Every time. Without exception.