I'm a better housekeeper in the Springtime. I often go to the garden and pick flowers to put in a vase over my kitchen sink. I do this before anything is cleaned, when the dishes are piled up and the trash is overflowing, when the laundry is piled high, drowning the furniture in socks again.
The vase sits there silently displaying bright pink and purple petals, deep roses with a hint of orange. Suddenly I feel the urge to wash a few dishes. Suddenly I want everything to be pretty and I don't mind the elbow grease involved. Suddenly, the poopsplosion that is my house with three boys and a ginormous dog doesn't seem so impossible.
The beauty of the flowers gives me hope. The delicate petals motivate me. The world can be more than grime and rogue legos.
Sometimes we see the broken, dirty world we live in and it's hard to see any hope. We look at our home and see the hurt, messy-mess of our everyday living and find it impossible to save the world. Everything can seem hopeless. Everything can be a dirty dish of despair.
How can I show diligence to the very end? How can I continue to love when the task is so overwhelming and people are so unlovable? How can I clean up the mess of the world when I can't keep my own kitchen clean?
Sometimes I feel like Christians are all about the mess. We stand in our own dirty houses proclaiming the mess of the world and it's so bad...so bad. There's no time to pick flowers. There's no time for anything except work. Work on yourself, work on your neighbor, work on your children...no wonder we're exhausted. No wonder it's hard to find joy.
I am a small person. I need flowers in my kitchen to inspire me. I need the promises of God to comfort me. I see His promises most in the unimportant actions of my life, in the flower picking, finger painting moments when I connect to beauty. It refreshes me and inspires me to tackle my mess.
Like the flowers over my sink, the promises of God are my hope. He has promised to make everything beautiful in it's time. He has promised to love and change me. He has begun a new work and he is faithful to complete it. It is the hope set before us. Be greatly encouraged. "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure..."
