The Beauty Of The Living

 

The winter months are upon us. Tis the season for Christmas, yes. But also a time for bracing ourselves for the (what it feels like to us) ugly, cold and dreary months ahead. It feels like nothing is growing and things are dying. But this morning, I had a different approach to the weather. It is a cold brisk morning and the sun is shining upon our poor looking tree in our front yard. All of the leaves have fallen and have turned to dark crunchy brown. Bare trees are displayed on our street for all the eyes to see. I knew it was coming. Every year it happens. And yet every year I’m a little sad that the beauty of spring, summer and fall has quickly slipped by and now the leaf memories of those seasons have one by one fallen to the ground to get mowed on or just left ignored. I feel like the tree in the yard. On the outside it looks lifeless- but it doesn’t mean it is. God is the center and core of our life, just like the tree trunk is still stabilizing the tree. The roots continue to be grounded in the dirt, regardless of what it looks like to the eye. 

I turn my eyes to the ground to where the leaves lay lifeless, and something grabs my attention. Grass. 

What? I thought it was winter? I just now looked up grass in the winter on Google. It says that grass doesn’t stop growing, it just grows slower from November to March. Hm. I don’t like slower most of the time. There are some things I am SLOW AT but I don’t like having to go slow- especially in hard trials of life. As I sat on our concrete porch, placing my legs on the front steps, God’s loving spirit talks to me and calmly speaks to me on what I’m about to say. In the ugly, cold places (leaves) that seem to take over the yard of my life, God’s light can peak through the cracks of where leaves aren’t covering the ground and shine on those areas. Because when light and water come through, things can still grow. Regardless of our circumstances and surroundings. Just like in the yard, yes there’s ugly leaves but what I also see now is LIFE! The leaves have been there for awhile and all I chose to see were leaves. But once I look a little closer, I realize there is grass growing too. 

It’s easy to look at trials, problems and listen to Satan’s lying whispers and only pay attention to that. Dear Friend, let me tell you. If you look hard enough and have accepted God to let his light shine in your life, you can find grass (Life) too! But the key is to allow God to shine on those gloomy dark places and allow you to go through some things so you will grow. It reminds me of a part in the book “Hind’s Feet On High Places”. Yes, I apologize for mentioning this book again. For anyone who knows me well, you will know I’m obsessed with this book. Okay, moving on. 

In one of the chapters, Much Afraid finds a yellow flower in her journey and it’s called Acceptance-with-Joy. 

“In all that great desert, there was not a single green thing growing, neither tree nor flower nor plant save here and there a patch of straggly gray cacti.

On the last morning {Much Afraid} was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was connected with a water tank. In the pipe was one tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things.

She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.”

The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy!”

Much-Afraid thought of the things which she had seen… Somehow the answer of the little golden flower which grew all alone in the waste of the desert stole into her heart and echoed there faintly and sweetly, filling her with comfort. She said to herself, “He (the Shepherd) has brought me here when I did not want to come, for His own purpose. I, too, will look up into His face and say, ‘Behold me! I am your little handmaiden, Acceptance-with-Joy.'”

I want to also be like the little yellow flower. I want God to find me planted in the desert, the unknown, and hear me say, “I am yours, Lord. I accept where you have placed me- though it may be dead, lonely and hard.” And once we get to a place of acceptance like that, God can turn us into a beautiful flower or green grass growing in a place filled with dead leaves. 

Lord, make me like a flower planted in the desert. May we find life in the dark gray areas in our lives. It’s our choice to allow God to turn us into a flower or to turn away and become dead with bitterness just like the leaves. 

I hope this encourages us to find life in the dead. 

Natalie J.