Learn from the Wild Flowers

It’s Sunday morning and grandma is playing with her 5-year-old granddaughter on the living room carpet. This little one’s mom is also present listening carefully to her mother’s advice on getting the best educational resources for her daughter. It appears I am in the room of a living miracle. Our “little one” had a missing chromosome that the doctors said would result in a child who would never speak or walk. The early years of her life required feeding tubes and a host of complicated medical procedures. Yet, this morning with the love of her parents and family and a determined grandmother who never quits this child has the ability to walk, speaks and even swims like a fish. Sometimes grandmothers are God’s gift to us when our burdens seem too heavy.

God wants to help you with your burdens. Now, no doubt you know that. I know that. But last week I found myself in a situation where I was not letting God carry my burden. I had "given it to Him" with mental ascent, but actually I had taken it back right after I had given it to Him.

Does this sound familiar with you? This morning I like you to remember the words Jesus said, "Come unto me all of you who are laboring and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." (Matt. Ll: 28)

I don’t know why it is, but when faced with some heavy situations I say, "God, well you have told me to bring my burdens to you, so here they are. (And I would list 5 or 6.) Then I get up from my chair and walk to the door.....free? NO. Why because I find myself "chained to them" I have "tied them" to my very being. So, in fact, I lied to Jesus when I told him I was leaving my burdens with him. How could Jesus take care of them when I, as if it were, "pulled" them away from his loving tender strong arms?

So, I have found myself much like the farmer who was going along the country road in his buckboard when he overtook a fellow who was walking - with great difficulty - with a very heavy bundle. He asked the man if he wanted a ride and if so, hop in. The traveler got into the buckboard, sat down very tired and put his heavy bundle in his lap. "I'm caring you," said the farmer, but "you are still carrying your burden."

Jesus our burden bearer has asked us to come to him with our cares, yet we fail to do so. We suffer - spiritually, physically. Let us throw it all on Him - be free of that which plagues us with fear and torment.

Immanuel watches over us as we reflect: " Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you…” (Matthew 6:28-30).

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that they be set free from the burdens that weigh them down. Let them give to you that which has been a concern so that they can straighten up in you...load free.

Heaven's Language of Love

Last Sunday, I witnessed the baptism of three miracle babies. Trevor, Emma and Ella were born pre-mature and struggled in the early hours of life to survive. But with lots of prayers and blessings and the gifts of a brilliant medical team they are all thriving as they received the waters of everlasting life at their baptism.

Their young mother described her delight in watching her new babies awake to more awareness. Her words: “They are all beautiful. Each baby is starting to vocalize a bit and smiles a lot when we talk to them.” This morning, while her five year-old son was having breakfast, he looked into Trevor’s eyes and said: ‘Are you talking to me?’ Little Trevor replied with something that sounded like ‘yeah!’ His brother was so excited - ‘Mommy, he talked!’ Mom didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was just a random utterance.”

Now this is a wonderful image, I believe, to describe what it will be like for each of us when we are born again into heaven. The maternal side of God will be looking us in the eyes, smiling, and trying to coax a smile and some words out of us, but we will be a bit too overwhelmed and underdeveloped to speak.

Heaven is going to be wonderful, no doubt. I believe we will wake up in heaven, like an infant again, too overwhelmed to speak, needing to be coaxed into a new language and a new consciousness by God’s smile.

We will have to try to learn the language of God’s stillness and divine quiet, in our own way. For me, walking in two feet of snow in quiet woods brings me into focus with this stillness. Perhaps it might be through your intimate relationships in your family, where words become superfluous; or perhaps a parent’s exhaustion changing the diapers of your triplets, or it will be in our loneliness and solitude, where silence breaks through both so painfully and peacefully; or maybe it will be through the very tediousness of our daily tasks, where burdens often reduce us to silence. There are many ways of learning divine silence and all of them are good.

Jesus told us that each of us needs to be born twice, once from below and once from above. We need also to be taught twice how to speak. Our mothers once gave us birth, from below, and they also coaxed, cajoled, and lured us into speech. Each of us has a “mother-tongue.”

Our second birth, our rebirth, our birth from above, will, I suspect, be somewhat similar. There will be time of having to leave the womb, the familiar, this life, and then a lonely journey down an unwanted birth canal into the greatest of all unknowns. Light, love, and community will greet us upon arrival. However it will be somewhat overwhelming, beyond language and imagination. We will be too stunned to speak, but God’s smile will awaken within us a smile and evoke from us something that sounds like a “yeah!”

Immanuel watches over us as we reflect: "What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1Cor 2:9).

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who are leaving the womb of this life. May their journey into the unknown be filled with loving family and friends at their side. Too stunned to speak, may God’s smile wipe away all our fears and from our lips a sound like a “yeah” that proclaims our faith and endless joy.