The Parable I Learned From An Orchid

It was orchid watering day when I nearly beheaded one of my plants.

Every couple weeks I spend a few moments over these flowers of mine, pretending to have a green thumb, enjoying the quiet.  I love it simply because orchids have enthralled me for as long as I can remember.  In fact, as a teenager I was sadly disappointed to read in one of the Anne of Green Gables books that orchids were too exotic to strike Anne's fancy.  To me, you see, the wide open blooms are like a welcoming smile on an honest face.  The blossoms floating from the stem conveys a grace I can only marvel at...

But back to my story...on this particular watering day I was delighted to notice new buds and blossoms on each one of my orchids.  Smiling happily, I worked to stake up a few of the stems burgeoning with heavy buds.  

Suddenly, I felt a sickening snap under my fingers as I straightened one stem against a stake, and realized to my horror that I had all but entirely snapped the stem in two.  It was hanging on by only a thread, and as I held the still-beautiful stem in my hand, I could hardly believe that I had really just broken it off.  The four or five buds it held, promising beautiful, luscious flowers in just a few weeks' time, now seemed to be taunting me of what I had destroyed.  

I didn't know what to do.  Should I snap it off the rest of the way and put the stem in a vase with the slim hope I would still get to see a few blooms?  Should I leave it there and hope the stem didn't grow diseased and infect the entire plant?  Although a quick internet search encouraged me in the snapping direction, I couldn't bring myself to do the deed.  So I just left the stem hanging on for dear life and ignored my sad little orchid for the next week or so, resigned to the fact that I had probably just killed any chance of blossoms from it for awhile.

But little did I know that while I left the broken stem for dead, something very alive was happening within that broken plant.  For fragile though orchids may appear, fussy though they may seem, they are actually among the most miraculous pictures of new birth that you will find in nature.

Some weeks later when I finally brought myself to assess the damage I had done, I could hardly believe I was looking at the same plant.  Not only had the broken stem begun to grow back together and continue to send life to the buds, but a new stem had begun to sprout from the break, and another little nub of a baby stem was beginning to peek out in a different spot.

I was astounded and humbled, and as I stared at the miracle blooming before my eyes, I realized the greater miracle the Creator of this orchid was teaching me:  that God is in the business of healing "the brokenhearted and bind[ing] up their wounds." {Ps. 147:3}  

He is the master of not just repair but rebirth. {Romans 6}

My orchid was not simply "just as good as before."  It was actually better than before, and isn't the analogy to our lives breathtaking?  God takes the broken stems of my life and the barely-born buds of vision that seem doomed to die and He sends life through them, growing stems and flowers beyond what I could have imagined. 

When a friend betrayed me, He became my Friend more truly than ever before.
When I was proud and tripped over my own ego, falling flat on my face, He picked me up and taught me humility.
When I was brokenhearted, He comforted me with His great grace, and I grasped for the first time just how un-graspable the well of His grace is.

So every time I look at my broken taped-up orchid and see not one, not two, but three potential stems and all the beauty they are pregnant with, I see myself.  I see my brokenness.  I see the tape holding my life and my heart together, and I see the new things God has done in me that He never could have accomplished had I remained unbroken.  And I marvel that, just as He has done throughout history, God used a humble flower to show me these truths.  

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
{Matthew 6:28b-29}

Look Up

June brought in warm evenings like summer's heralding banner, and the rich woolly sky blanketed the sleepy house where some friends and I were cuddled up for a late night.  My phone suddenly buzzed at me with a message from my mama, but not the one I was expecting: "Go look outside!"

"Girls--listen to this!" I cried, and we all jumped up, heavy eyelids instantly opened in wonder.

We leapt outside in our bare feet, spiraling in circles with our arms outstretched and our eyes heavenward, trying to spot Jupiter and Venus converging into one visual spectacular.  Desperate to beat the expiration of a perhaps once-in-a lifetime sight, we ran down to the golf course, but trees shut us in on every side.

We charged back up to the main road and sprinted down the asphalt, past dark houses that scowled at our wakefulness at such an hour.  When I rounded the last bend in the road, coming to where it sprouted off from a busy street, the sky unrolled across the horizon above a treeless field, and there the great conjunction of the two planets shone in a star-of-Bethlehem-like brilliance.

The two planets danced so closely together that their brightness was mesmerizing to anyone who laid eyes on the sight.  And we were no exception.  The four of us made a rock our arm chair, and I sat in awe with my hands clasped around my legs.

There was no clock to fetter the flitting moments down.

There was no rhythm ticking an impending deadline besides the unison beating of our hearts.

So we watched in reverent silence, our backs masked by the darkness, but our faces lit by the light of the star.  With such a sight glittering in our eyes, we couldn't help but sing hymns of praise to the Morning Star, and there was something special about that worship by the roadside that I won't ever forget.

Time lapsed...cars streaked by...but the star, my friends, and I remained.

It struck me as we sat how odd we must have looked to the passersby.  But when a busy, harried soul drove by and saw four women with their eyes rapturously fixed on the sky, I wondered if he would follow our gaze and look up, even if just out of curiosity.

In that moment on that warm June evening a chill went down my back.  For through my wondering I found a rich nugget that I've carried with me these past six months.

Shouldn't my eyes perpetually be fixed with equally rapturous delight on Jesus the Morning Star?

And shouldn't I be so enthralled by and illuminated with His light that all who pass me can't help but follow my gaze and stare, not at me, but at Who I am looking to?

Yes and yes.

And if at the end of my days it is said that the best analogy for the thrust of my life was that beautiful, worshipful evening of looking up, I will be satisfied.  If it is said of my life that all who looked at me couldn't help but look to Jesus because of me, my mission will be complete. 

“We Choose to See Vol. 002,” © 2013 AMRenault, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

The Miracle of Not Knowing

Our green tomatoes have nearly finished fattening up on their vines.  In fact, the chubby little cherry tomatoes nearly explode in my fingers when I pluck them, so juicy are they.  Leaves potpourri the grass, sending the message that we had better hasten to finish hemming summer up before we are blanketed in rain.  Apple cider is in the freezer, and gallons of fresh chipotle salsa, too.  All of this plentiful harvest that signals change ahead is comforting, because I know exactly what to expect.

I know the first frost will soon appear, and with it our dog Bentley’s fur will thicken, the garden will be put into hibernation, and Thanksgiving and Christmas will soon thread through the tapestry of the year.  For me, the turning over from one season to another is like the thrill of opening the door to a well-loved and memory-filled vacation house which I have not seen in a year.  Welcoming. Nostalgic. Warm.  

But I like to wonder if the first seasonal change brought trepidation or curiosity for Adam and Eve?  For this would have been before God’s promise to Noah: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease. {Gen. 8:22}” So when the days began to shorten, or when change began to cloak the familiar garden, I wonder if Adam and Eve looked at each other in awe or in dread?  

In my mind’s narrative, the story surely progresses with awe.  They knew this new world was all the great masterwork of the God they loved.  They surely would have run to confide in Him the changes they saw and to ask what other changes they could expect in the garden.  For it was God’s unconditional goodness that made the garden a paradise, and as long as they trusted in His goodness, paradise it would remain.  

The irony is that the moment they gave a home in their minds to the vagabond of doubt in God’s true goodness, the moment they began to fear the paradise was not as good as they had trusted, that was when they began the destruction of paradise with their own hands.  

The psalmist said, “Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You In the presence of the sons of men! {Ps. 31:19}”  

Oh that we could return to that childlike, untainted trust of Adam and Eve before the fall!   

With that kind of trust, we would look at the changing seasons of life, not with a fatalistic dread of what unexpected bomb is going to drop next, but with an uncomplicated awe at watching God’s plan unfold. 

I love the changing seasons because I know what is going to happen next, but what would happen if I dared to love the changing seasons of life because I don’t know what is going to happen next?  That’s the attitude that takes a red maple leaf from mundane to miraculous.  

 

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“This Must Be the Place-explored!,” © 2008 Bridget H, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.