Earlier this spring, while hustling from thing to thing, I was stopped in my tracks. When you’re going a million miles an hour, slamming on the brakes is a bit like trying to stop a train – something impressive has stand in the way of the locomotive to stop it. There is a theory in our world that to make an impression you have to MAKE AN IMPRESSION. To sell a car, you have to yell at the potential car buyer. To get someone’s attention, enormous billboards are best. The M.O. of most is preferably shocking, scintillating and sleazy.
Thankfully, this wasn’t any of those things. This was a flower in brick steps.
Simplicity exemplified. When you see something so pure, so innocent, well, that can stop a freight train on a dime. A newborn fawn stuck like velcro to its mother on an April dewy dawn. The toes of an infant crinkled while asleep. The sincerity of a single joyous tear of your best friend. These have the capacity to make us stop, think and thank.
The incessant drive for bigger, badder, and louder shove the good simplicity of the gifts of God to the corner, telling them to sit quietly and unobtrusively. The big boys are talking. It’s best to be seen, but not heard. And yet, when I think about all the car commercials and the booming shills selling the cars, I remember none of them. When I try to remember the billboards my eyes have seen, I can’t seem to recall a single one. When I think about the sleazy, slimy and sticky ways others have tried to get my vote or my approval, I can’t seem to bring up those occasions with pleasure.
What I do remember are the simple times of hopefulness. This flower pushed its petals heavenward through a tiny crack in the brick of our entryway. “It’s a weed,” some might declare. “It’s not a lily so it has no place at the front of the church building,” some might argue. “I’m walking here, flower! Move it or lose it,” one might exclaim.
And yet, I plopped right down next to that flower and thought about all the people around us that are trying to push through the bricks that keep them down, out, and silent. Who among us is oppressed? Who among us is depressed? Who among us is stressed? If God’s eye is always upon the sparrow, our eye should be on the flowers, – people that are yearning for some of Christ’s sonlight. Who among you are beautiful, yet unassuming flowers, that need to be seen, loved, and encouraged in their faith? Wherever there are bricks, you can count on flowers pushing their way up, because God makes a way, where there seems to be no way.
In Christ,
Pastor Will