Just live...

I don't know why, but I've always been able to grow African Violets. I can't grow any other plant, but African Violets seem to be OK with me. I ignore them, water them when I finally remember, pluck the dead leaves periodically and voila they survive and even bloom! Just before Christmas they were struggling pretty badly because while we were living in the city I never really gave them a thought. Then one day I noticed them sitting on the table against the wall where I had put them to make room for the Christmas tree. I poked my finger in each pot and came up with extremely dry dirt, so I pinched off all the dead and excess leaves and after a decent watering I put them back on the table and went on with life. Then this past weekend I noticed that they had all blossomed at the same time. I stood and stared at the different colors and the different shape of each flower how precious and tiny each bloom was. Every once in awhile I would tenderly touch the tiny petals hoping that they would continue to bloom for as long as possible.

I had forgotten how beautiful they could be. I remembered how much time I spent searching through all the different tiny pots in Wal Mart and Superstore looking for one more that was just a little bit different than what I already had at home. I had forgotten how exciting it was to find just the right one at the back of the shelf and carefully cradle it in my hand when I went to pay for it.

Today I got out my camera and decided to share this little piece of beauty in my world with you. As I was loading the pictures of the flowers into my computer I thought of God, been thinking about Him an awful lot these past few weeks and I wondered if when He looks down at us does He smile like I smiled when I saw that first little bud rising up out of the leaves? Does He become filled with joy and expectation when he watches us like I have been doing the past few days watching the flowers form? I believe that He touches us tenderly in a special way through His spirit to let us know that he remembers us always and cares for us more deeply than we will ever understand?

And just like I had to clean up the dead leaves from my precious little plants, I know that He carefully helps us to purge the dead leaves from our lives, those ugly little sins that smother and prevent the healthy growth from continuing. Does He watch us hoping that we will continue blooming for a little longer than we did the last time?

Deep down we all know that we can't bloom where we are until we have been shaken up a bit, but who wants that? Not me that's for sure. But we have to trust that God knows what's good for us, but that's sometimes easier said than done isn't it?

You know, I've been thinking a lot about Easter coming in a few months and I've been reading that amazing story again and thinking that anything that we are going through does not compare to what God asked of His own Son.

He is not asking me to endure an unfair trial with people who have conjured up false stories of who I am in order to have me killed. He is not asking me to endure a beating that would leave me unrecognizable. He is not asking me to be nailed to a cross, to be spit on and despised. In fact, He is asking just the opposite. He is asking me and you, all of us, to live. To do more than survive this life, but to live as well and as fully as we can, for Him. That shouldn't be too hard...should it?

"For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever."

1 Peter 1:23-25