Queen Anne's Lace
I came across an interesting article about the wildflower, Queen Anne’s Lace. It has beautiful umbrella shaped, lacy-looking white flowers that have a small red dot in the center of it. The rare thing about this flower is that it cannot blossom unless it is first infested with bugs. Weird, hey? God created such a beautiful wildflower to open only if bugs forced the blossom to open. There’s that sense of hu-mor in our Creator again!
We can be like Queen Anne’s Lace. Or we can be like Azaleas that blossom only under ―perfect‖ conditions. What do we do when life ―bugs‖ us? Do we use those difficult times to grow in our faith, to become a better person, to listen to the voice of God? Or do we blame it on where we’re planted, the lack of attention, or other people who aren’t treating us the way we want to be treated?
Times of stress, illness, or hardship can help our relationship with God grow stronger in the strangest ways. They can give us permission to be mad at God. We can scream, yell and kick our feet until we’re blue in the face. The great thing about getting mad at God is that God is big enough to take our anger. God does not run from our angry words nor does God turn His back on our pain. He stays with us while we run the gamut of emotions and helps us find ways to show us His love. Then God wraps His loving arms around us and helps us to see the light of His love through the darkness of our despair.
I pray that when you feel like your life is overwrought with ―bugs‖ and you don’t know how you’re going to cope, that you will see the possibilities of new life and new beginnings. I pray that we will be like Queen Anne’s Lace and become fully alive in spite of and because of the troubles we bear. Through the fire of pain and suffering we gain our depth, our flavor, our salt.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5: 1-5)
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Sue Beadle
Leave a Reply