Tuesday, March 29, 2011

LOOK! CONSIDER! SEEK!

"Behold the Lilies of the Field"

Years ago, I  sang this song which ended with the line, “. . .and today, He walks beside me, for He knows what lies ahead.”  I was twenty-something then and had no idea that my future held, among other things,  a near-death, crippling car accident; a separation; a rejection; a child lost to drugs; a parent’s early death.  It is  best that I did not know my future at that point.  However, as I sang those words I did know that I could trust the outcome of my life to Him.  Just as when I follow a tatting pattern that the end will work out as planned.

There is a difference though.  The tatting will work out as planned, if I do every stitch and join correctly!
Whereas, life is a series of connections made because of decisions; and, we don’t know the outcome of those decisions.  Life also depends upon the actions of others and how those actions and behaviors affect our lives.  Life is an intricate tapestry.  Life is a miracle in and of itself.

Spring is the season of  miracles. A good definition of a miracle is what my children learned.  A miracle is a great and good thing that only God can do! (or bring about) If you do not believe in miracles, you haven’t paid proper attention!  A child is born!  That is the miracle of life itself.  Doctors use the knowledge they have to cure diseases; is that not a miracle?  Things in life that we now take for granted would have been thought miraculous 50 years ago.  A dear friend of mine, “Grandma” Quinn, came across the West in a prairie schooner.  When she was in her late 80’s she flew in a jet across those barren deserts and alkali flats and remembered her first trip.  The heat, the walking, the need for water.  Just having water is a miracle  somewhere at this moment in time.  She told me with wonder in her eyes and voice what she saw from the window near her seat on the plane.  

Spring’s miracle is all around us, rising up through the earth are the flowers and foliage of the season.
Soon Christian’s will celebrate Easter and wee greet one another, “He is risen” and reply, “He is risen indeed.”  Not just metaphorically, not just as a Spirit but flesh and blood; fully man yet fully God.  The same God who brought all things to being.  We meet Him first in Genesis and his birth and death and resurrection are foretold in the Old as well as the New Testaments of the Bible.   

His message to us?  “. . .do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what will you put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? LOOK at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet, your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?  And why are you anxious about clothing?  CONSIDER the lilies of the field:  how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matthew 6: 25 through 28
  . . . . vs 33 “But, SEEK first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness and all these things will be added to you."

The questions we must ask our selves, do I have a personal relationship with the One who knows what lies ahead? Am I in the Kingdom of Man or the Kingdom of God?  Can you say with conviction,
 “He is Risen Indeed!” 
 Life is Terminal.  What Then?

Lord, give hearing ears and teachable hearts.L