Far better to be known to God and forgotten by people than to be famous with men and unheard of in Heaven. Choose your friends carefully because only one sticks closer than a brother.
faith
The Space Between the Flowers
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2:8 KJV
“What are you doing?!” I shouted at my friend who had weeding in the perennial garden along the back wall.
“Look I pulled all the weeds out!” he said. I shook my head in amazement at the six feet of flower bed that now lay completely devoid of growth of any kind.
“But you pulled everything else out too. Where are the flowers?” I asked in confusion.
“I’m sorry there were so many weeds that I couldn’t tell which ones were the flowers.” He said sorrowfully.
My fault had been in allowing the weeds to get so thick that it had become impossible to pull them out. I had forgotten that a garden grows best when there is a space around the flowers.
Maybe that is why we sometimes feel alone and God seems silent. He has not forgotten us, but in the garden that is our soul He has chosen to make some space between the flowers. He pulls out and separates things from our lives so that we will bloom our brightest and most brilliant colors when the season is just right.
Today is Not a Dry Run!
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil Ephesians 5:16 KJV
Quite a few years ago I had a friend whose favorite saying was, “Today is not a dry run.” It reminded me of when we visited Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. There we walked through the old shipyard where whaling ships were once built. We were shown how piece by piece the ancient ships were built; mostly by hand. In our Christian walk we sometimes think of ourselves as being in God’s shipyard; where He is slowly fashioning us and preparing us for the day when He will launch us on our maiden voyage. But in his letter to the Ephesian church Paul the apostle tells us something very different:
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil Ephesians 5:16 KJV
Or as Toula’s mother tells her in the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding; “I gave you life so you could live!”
God has created us to live! In fact Jesus gave His own life so that we could live forever and forever includes today! Our moments and hours today are not just valuable because they are preparing us for the future. The greatest treasure we have is the moment we are living right now! Nothing will ever taste better than today’s Daily Bread. God’s plan for us isn’t that we would be safely locked inside a glass case for others to admire us, but that we would launch out into unknown seas, with our eyes on the North Star of His will. Today is not a dry run, We were made for more than the shipyard. God himself has built us to sail through both calm seas and storms. If Jesus is our pilot then He will guide us home.
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