~ Betty's Gardens ~

The day lily is a very satisfactory plant for a lazy gardener. It thrives in almost any soil, it tolerates heat and cold, it tolerates crowding, it even tolerates neglect. The blooms will reach through weeds and voila! there is a bright spot of beauty amid the chaos. Of course, it will even do better if you encourage it a bit. Give it some space, divide its roots every few years and you will be rewarded for your efforts with a bevy of dazzling blooms.

Each flower of the day lily lasts only a day. All that brilliant color that is so eye-catching and breath-taking in the morning sunshine looks totally pathetic the next morning. Growers have done a lot of work with day lilies, developing new varieties and colors. But, they have not been able to change the name to week lily or month lily. It still is the plant with the beautiful bloom that only lasts one day. Fortunately there are a lot of buds on a day lily so the beauty goes on for quite a while.

The day lily reminds me that things can still bloom even when neglected, but that they do better with some attention. Sometimes the attention is tender and gentle. Other times it involves digging into the roots and pulling them apart.

It is an example of how God works with believers to build a church of beautiful but differing blooms, with various needs and requirements. Like any garden the church has ‘plants’ in various stages; seedlings, saplings and mature established plants. There may be annuals, perennials, delicately fronded ferns or sturdy marigolds, bright hues and subtle hues in an eclectic garden that the Master knows well and cherishes.

Let the Master Gardener work on you, recognize the lessons He sends your way as He grows you into the plant that blooms with the gifts that He has given you. Grow, glow and go tell others. You are far more beautiful than a day lily and you can live forever!

Admit it. You’ve thought about it. You’ve said, “If I were God I’d _______.”

God is generous and gives us many of the things we ask for. He blesses us with spiritual gifts; among them are discernment and wisdom. But those gifts do not ever give us license to be God — not even for a second and certainly not for a whole day.

Why do I even try to understand why God does or lets happen some of the things that seem so unkind or unfair to me? Why do I not spend my time doing what God has instructed me to do? Things like being salt and light as taught by Jesus in Matthew Chapter 5, bringing out the God flavors of the earth and the God colors of this world.

Those are things I can do, and some days I’m good at it, other days not so much. I need to be plugged in to God, constantly recharging to maintain my saltiness and radiance.

The task is much easier if I am willing to let God be God, He doesn’t need me to give Him permission to answer prayers in a certain way. He would rather I offer a prayer to Him and let Him take it from there.

He would rather I have compassion and concern for those that are in need of His love and care, and show them that love by being the salt and light that I can be through Him. Or as I like to think of it, “shake and shine”.

In Isaiah 55 there are a couple of verses that let me know why I (or you) can’t be God for a day. “I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work."

“For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.” (from Isaiah 55:8-11, The Message Bible)

“Walk into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They don’t fuss with their appearance — but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the wildflowers, most of them never even seen, don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you?” (from Luke 12:27-28, The Message Bible)

I was just looking at a seed catalog and saw seeds for the common milkweed. Imagine, ordering seeds for milkweed! After all, God gives them to us free of charge. When I detect the aroma of milkweed on a hot summer morning I am reminded of many things.

I remember that our yard always had milkweed growing in it. In fact, my mother zealously protected them. Each year my uncle threatened to pull them, and each year she reminded him that as far as she was concerned they were not a weed but a wildflower.

Under one of my bedroom windows there was a clump of them and smelling them on a summer night as I was falling asleep is one of my favorite memories.

The plant is a fun plant. When you are a small child it is quite interesting to break them off and see the ‘milk’ — you can really get into grubby, sticky kid-stuff with a milkweed. As you become more genteel you watch for the maturing of the pods to harvest and use for craft items. With a good imagination and a few milkweed pods you can make great Christmas ornaments.

The seed parachutes are enchanting — they glisten in the sun as they go floating off in the wind, guaranteeing perpetuation of the species as the Creator planned.

They also remind me of the way God provides. The Monarch Butterfly is very dependent on milkweed; they feed on them, lay their eggs on them, wrap themselves in a cocoon on them, and launch forth reborn in wondrous beauty from them. If He did all that for the butterfly, just think what He will do for us when we open our hearts and let Him.

Emerge from your cocoon, spread your wings and become what God created you to be.

It’s amazing what a crossword puzzle can lead to. The clue was, ‘running in neutral’. That little clue really pricked my conscience. How often do I run in neutral and totally waste my time—more than I care to admit.

Running in neutral can be very deceiving. If you compare it to a car, you turn the key, start the motor and there is a noise that tells you something has happened — it’s running, however, it’s idling. You can even step on accelerator and rev the engine and make lots of impressive noise.

But, you’re not going anywhere. You can hunch down over the steering wheel and turn it and pretend. But, the view doesn’t change. You’re running in neutral. Sounds like something is happening, but the key word here is ‘idle’.

How easy it is to get caught up in things that just don’t matter, to spend hours on the unimportant, to become obsessed with things that divert our attention from God. Even things that start out being done for God can suddenly turn into our pet project with God’s direction forgotten or ‘improved upon’.

Holding a position in the church can be a very good thing with an opportunity to make a difference or we can become so impressed with ourselves that we become obsessed with ‘our agenda’ and lose touch with God in the process. I don’t want to be important in the world's eyes, I want God to see a humble servant.

Sometimes when I reflect in the evening I realize it has been a ‘running in neutral’ day. Lots of activity, but nothing of much consequence accomplished. I guess if I’m going to be ‘idling’, I would like it to be in a manner that is conducive to hearing God, not in a 'running in neutral' frenzy that drowns him out.

They grew there alongside the path, two trilliums. Each morning and evening as I walked by I took note of how they were growing and developing. They were larger and bolder than the others growing nearby and should certainly produce beautiful flowers.

Then one morning only one of them stood tall and proud. The other one had been trampled. Its stem was bent in a couple of places and it no longer was a perfect specimen.

I continued to watch the progress of the plants as they matured and flowered. The flowers were identical. Beautiful, pure white, giant trilliums that reminded me of the Trinity. The bright yellow center reminds me of the star that shone in the sky the night that Jesus was born; it also reminds me that Jesus is the ’light of the world’.

I just love God's object lessons. The broken, trampled, stepped-on plant can flower just as magnificently as the tall, unblemished plant. Both plants were receiving the nourishment they needed through good root systems that enabled them to survive and produce beautiful blossoms.

How often do we become broken and bruised as we seek to fulfill our purpose? It is easy to become discouraged and sometimes it is easier to give up than to go on. But if you do give up, that leaves one less flower in the magnificent bouquet that God is crafting - - one blossom at a time.

Work on your root system, spend time with the Creator, produce a beautiful flower no matter what you have been in the past.

Remember the trilliums: one standing tall with a flower held up for all to see. But God also sees the flower that is only three inches off the ground. They have both borne blossoms and they are beautiful to Him.

This morning I watched a robin building a nest. My attention was drawn to the project as I saw various items falling from, or hanging off of a tree outside my window.

Nest building appears to be quite an undertaking, or perhaps she was a novice; but she certainly appeared to be having a bit of trouble. As I continued to observe the process I noticed her fly into the tree with a good size piece of paper, and then it fluttered to the ground.

Down she flew, retrieved the piece of paper, walked along the limb and tried to incorporate it into the nest; again it fluttered to the ground. Over and over again this happened, one time she even caught the paper in mid-air.

By now I was really getting into this, I wanted to charge out of the back door, set up the ladder, pick up the piece of paper and help her get it woven into the nest. Realizing how absolutely shocking this would be to the robin I decided that prayer would be more practical.

As I was pointing out to the Father that He might have already noticed this, but, just in case He hadn’t, one of His creatures was having a bit of difficulty — He said, time for a lesson.