Beauty in Hand

Tulips are up. Pink, purple, white, and any other color big one threw in the cart last fall as we snatched up clearance bulbs.

 Before I could gather them for a vase, they were found...

snatched by hands eager to hold beauty.

In those tulips, I saw two worlds:

My mom's as she watched her toil in the garden snapped up by my small fingers or crushed under careless feet. Beheaded plants, some with bulbs exposed, bedraggled garden.

Myself, as a little girl, confused at mommy's dismay. Smelling and seeing from the border were well enough, but I wanted to be in the garden, sitting in the middle of all those colors, holding flowers in my hands. Tasting beauty.

Small one embraces her tulip, pressing it to her chest. Petals fall to the ground as she releases. She's all smiles.

The flowers would last longer in a vase. But they would never have been enjoyed like they were crushed in tiny fingers. I'm all smiles, as I let go the garden and embrace their joy.

A Daffodil in the Lawn

One daffodil sprouts through the lawn. I didn't plant it there. It must have put down roots after a squirrel dug it up, took one bite and cast it aside. A very plucky flower. My favorite because it's sharing beauty from the wrong spot.

I'm all wrong to see beauty right now. My heart is heavy. My Bible barely read. My prayers hastily thrown skyward over a chaotic weekend.

God's grace is beauty, shining in unlikely moments. He reminds me that He loves me because I am His, not because I act like His. He answers prayers because I am His, not because I ask correctly.

I bow on my knees before the Father... that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height  and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:15-19

Rooted and ground in love. God's love founds knowledge and filling. His power and peace pour from his love that surpasses knowledge. 

And here is his astonishing answer. Verse 17 {John 7}: "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." I remember sometime in the fall of 1967 at Wheaton College being shocked when someone brought this to my attention—that right willing is the foundation of right knowing. It seemed at the time to make life more complicated, more mysterious, and certainly less under my control. Less rationalistic. The intellectual task of knowing truth suddenly became a moral task, and a spiritual task. ~~John Piper, "Willing God's Will As A Way of Knowing Christ's Word"

My state of learning and study doesn't matter. Unable to snatch even a few quiet moments to open the Word, yet I am immersed in the truth of God's grace more tangibly than any reading can provide. God has made my heart right willing that my foundation in hardship is right knowing. Grace sprouting in my life from the wrong spot.