Growing Things

Lately I've been thinking about growing things. Maybe this phenomenon has occurred because lately I've been pretty stuck and having a hard time with personal growth. But, there is something so precious and hopeful about something that hasn't arrived, but is on its way to being grown. Sometimes in the pruning process the outside looks a bit more like mutilation than growth. But, if you don't cut down the wild direction less and diseased branches the rest of the plant will suffer in the long run.
The other day i was sitting at home listening to the familiar sounds of my apartment and surfing the internet when I heard a not so familiar sound. It was a little chirp, but I thought I was imagining it until my roomate came in tenderly and held up a small box and said, "Surpise!" I looked eagerly into the shoe box and found a little black speckled chick. It was adorable, and this fragile being that needed our care. We rescued it from a teenager, its a long story, but I'm sure you can understand the need. For the next couple days we fussed over our chick and tried our best to care for it. The first night I had a dream that it died because it was too cold, so I woke up and rushed into the bathroom to look into its new box and saw it sleeping soundly its little furry body moving slightly with its chick breaths. All the sudden there was this great visual, a little growing thing. Its been hard for me to find hope lately and Percy the chick really helped me to remember that as long as we're growing there is hope. Sometimes I just want to find the fix for my failings, or for other peoples failings and forget that I have often left out the part where Grace enters into the picture. The grace of growing things is that they are working towards a better picture of who they were meant to be, but it is ok that they are not there yet. In my perfectionist mind I often get stuck on the ways I am not right and then I'm paralyzed. I feel hard and distant from God who I assume is disappointed in me. When in reality he is waiting in love, and correcting me perhaps, in love, wanting to embrace me even though I'm covered in sin, if i am willing to let Him in and trust Him. This lesson is a difficult, and good. But, i must remember that I too am a growing thing. That when I look at a little growing flower, a little growing chick, I see something precious and beautiful and I don't dislike them because they are not blooming or full grown chickens. In the same way when God looks at me he sees a growing thing and he loves me as that. What a comforting thought, and this thought saves me daily.

Yet this I call to Mind

Life is full of strange fragile moments. One moment I am greedily playing tennis and then the next a ball slips under my foot and I am bearing down under the pain in my ankle unable to move. This recent event is significant for me because it marks an intense difficulty, a split moment that takes a long time to work out its consequences. Somehow God always uses stuff like this to really get to the point. Like a big pruning shear in the sky, sometimes he swoops down and cuts us down with precision and it hurts but it is definitely bearable and better than eternal separation from God. Through it all I do feel a bit mangled and dragged around like Jeremiah in Lamentations, although he has more right to feel that way than I. I don't mind as much as I used to that I now have to rely on friends to get around, eat, pick up after myself etc. But it is a reminder that one of my fundamental problems is that I am proud of being independent and often think I am a person unto myself, unconnected to God or anyone else. Though I am learning that I'd rather be a sinner with a forgiving, loving heart than a righteous person harboring bitterness and unforgiveness. Still, I am more like Simon the Pharisee who criticized Jesus for letting a "sinful" woman touch him than the woman who poured out her alabaster jar upon our Lords head and wept at his feet in adoration. I long to be the one close to Jesus though, the one who was forgiven much and who loves much. In this process of being hurt and uncovering more of my rotten heart, I have learned that I have been forgiven much even the hidden sins in my heart that no one sees. So, I am encouraged this morning by the words of Lamentations that Jeremiah writes. This man of sorrow who has seen every kind of suffering can call to mind why he has hope.

He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.

I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.

So I say, "My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the LORD."

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;

it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.