Petunia surprise

 My need for petunia bedding plants and a store’s great price had brought me to this sale rack. But there was one problem: only one flat remained. It had no label and no buds to hint at the color of its eventual flowers. I bought it anyway, deciding this year I’d live with “Petunia Surprise.”

As I planted the tender starts, I was reminded of few principles from scripture.  One is that God knew this plant from its seed, just as He knows us from the very beginning. With our son and wife expecting their first baby (and our first grandchild) this summer, I think again of Psalm 139:13-16. We’re not randomly manufactured, but divinely “knit together” in the womb—“fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Another is that God has a plan for our lives. We are called to worship and serve Him—to bring Him glory, even as petunias in their “plant way” declare the amazing plan of their Creator.  The problem comes when our self-doubts and stubbornness avoid God’s opportunities.

Moses, rescued as a baby from slaughter, raised in a palace, when called to lead the Hebrews from slavery, handed God this story about being “incompetent”: “I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10). God never asked if Moses had passed Speech 101.

Gideon, called to defend his homeland, whimpered lack of social position: “My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judges 6:15). God wasn’t looking for social pedigree.

The infamous “sluggard” of Proverbs said, “It’s too hard”: “There is a lion outside…I will be murdered in the streets!” (Prov. 22:13). Give him an A+ for imagination and an F- for trust.

Isaiah didn’t consider himself spiritual enough for a holy task: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). God’s remedy was one purging hot coal away.

 Jeremiah considered himself a weak link: “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child” (Jer. 1:6). Actually, he was a grown man with the spiritual fears of a child.

 Ezekiel was in exile, hundreds of miles away from his homeland. Plus, who’d want to listen to somebody preach negative sermons? God was in that assignment, too (Ezekiel 1-3).

God never intended us to sit in a pot of dirt and do nothing. Jesus said, “I chose you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last” (John 15:16).  His desire is that we be “rooted and established in [God’s] love” (Eph. 3:17). Or, as the author of Hebrews said so eloquently in images of nature: “Land that drinks in the rain falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God” (Heb. 6:7).

To take the analogy back to petunias, it’s blooming in the unique way that God has equipped us. Those discoveries will go on our whole lives as we grow in faith, love, and service.

“Petunia Surprise”? I’m looking forward to the glorious shots of color in my yard, courtesy the Creator.  

Birdhouses and Psalm 84

A birdhouse-lover lives about a block away. Dozens of bird-size boxes adorn her trees. As I walk past, the “happy chirp” volume is high. I thought of this display when recently studying Psalm 84:

 Even the sparrow has found a home,

And the swallow a nest for herself,

Where she may have her young—
A place near your altar,
O LORD Almighty, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
They are ever praising you. (vv. 3-4)

I always considered Psalm 84 the “glad-to-be-in-church” psalm. James Montgomery Boice gives a different viewpoint in calling this “The Psalm of the Janitors.” The subtitle indicates this was “of the sons of Korah,” one of eleven such psalms so dedicated. The Korahites were part of the temple staff, charged with gate-keeping (1 Chron. 26:1) and singing.
 

Until now, I never gave much thought to the birds, knowing how they will find anywhere to nest. They’re often fluttering through the rafters of warehouse stores, despite the efforts of management to get rid of them. But Boice brought my attention to something else: the types of birds mentioned.

Sparrows were symbols of worthlessness. In Bible times, they sold two for about a penny or five for two cents (Matt. 10:39, Luke 12:6). Yet these “worthless” birds made their homes near the altar of Israel’s worship center. Jesus said that even when they fall to the ground, God knows about it. He added, “Don’t be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29, 31).

Swallows symbolized restlessness. They’re constantly on the “fly” until they nest and raise young. Bible teacher John Stott wrote that he thought the swallows were the same as the screaming swift, still found at the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem. We, too, are restless and flittering about until we come to rest in God. As St. Augustine famously said, “Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.”

I find a comforting sense of continuity in this psalm. First, the Korahites composed a song alluding to temple birds. Then Jesus based parables on them. And they’re still around! It reminds me how with God, a day is as a thousand years (Psalm 90:4). Nothing is too insignificant to Him. If birds find rest under His watchful eye, how much more does He care for His cherished children.

We too can “nest” near His altar and find that resting place. We can “dwell” in His house through fellowship with other believers, and through those hidden, private times of prayer and reflection. So blessed, praise should be our automatic response (v. 4).

Worth-ship and rest. Take a lesson from birds? I think we can.

Reservoirs

A hundred years ago, my area was a desolate scrubland of rocks and sagebrush. Today, orchards and other crops thrive amidst a crisscrossing of irrigation canals or pipes. They, in turn, are fed by a vast system of reservoirs. Seeing these reminds me of an ancient quote by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153): “If then you are wise, you will show yourself to be a reservoir than as a canal. For a canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus communicates, without loss to itself, its superabundant water. In the Church at the present day, we have many canals, few reservoirs.”(1)

In other words, the church has a lot of people with shallow, quick answers. But without input from the true Source, they run dry. They need the instruction and encouragement that comes from “reservoir” believers of depth and regular replenishment.

Bible-times people would have understood the reservoir analogy. Their arid climate had only two annual rainy seasons, May and October. To store that precious water, people built reservoirs and underground stone cisterns. One of my Bible reference books shows a photo of three large reservoirs, called “Solomon’s Pools,” a couple miles south of Bethlehem, supplying Old Jerusalem. Pine trees and palms surrounded the still waters.

The continual come-and-go of water keeps reservoirs from becoming stagnant, like swamps. By analogy, when there’s no giving-out of ourselves, we become foul spiritual swamps.

How do more mature believers become reservoirs to nurture others? One insight comes from Marva J. Dawn in her book, To Walk and Not Faint (Eerdmans, pp. 67-68). Drawing from analogies in Psalm 23, she wrote: “With what variety and thoroughness the Lord provides so that his people are fed. He nurtures us through the disciplines of our own devotional times and private meditations. He propels us by means of teachers and preachers and practitioners of His Word. He sustains us through the vitality of Christian communities and assemblies of believers. He nourishes us through music. He uplifts us with breathtaking sunsets and the myriad hues of flowers. Truly, the Lord, our shepherd, endows us so that we shall not want.”

How might you describe your spiritual “water” condition? Dry with faithlessness? Stagnant like a swamp? Quickly emptied, like a canal? Or continually replenished while giving out, like a reservoir? To such “giving out” people I owe a great debt for the spiritual nurture I’ve received over many years.

For all of us, that invitation remains: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1).


(1) Quoted in Richard Foster,Prayer: Find ing the Heart’s True Home (New York: Harper/SanFrancisco, 1992), p. 168.

A river runs through them

“Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace”—those lines from an old hymn came to mind as my husband pulled off the road to viewpoint above the Similakameen River in northern Washington state. Its Indian name means “treacherous waters,” though from this vantage it seemed a peaceful, albeit energetic, body of moving water.

In my exposure to classic hymns of the faith, I’ve realized that quite a number reference rivers. This isn’t surprising, considering how the Bible highlights two rivers in Eden, the Jordan in the Promised Land, and the River of Life in Heaven.

I recalled the rest of that hymn’s opening verse: “....perfect peace, perfect yet it floweth, fuller every day, perfect yet it groweth, deeper all the way.” We’d driven to this valley because things were not very “perfect” at home. Widespread forest fires, set by lightning a month earlier, had shrouded our valley in smoke deemed very hazardous to people in “sensitive groups.” That included me, an asthmatic. Even to go out to the mailbox, I used an industrial particulate mask. For health, we just had to get away. And so we found our way to this remote valley and lovely river.

Often back at home, on sunny days, we’ll walk a trail adjacent to our own Columbia River. At such times, snatches of these old hymns come to me with their metaphors of how God’s wisdom and love are deeper and fuller.

I find stories behind hymns fascinating, and here are some of those for “river” hymns.

“Like a river glorious” was penned by Miss Frances Havergal, a prolific lyricist and devotional writer despite fragile health. Complications from a cold once left her so ill that doctors thought she’d die--this being before the discovery of antibiotics. Instead of fretting, she told her friends, “If I am really going, it is too good to be true.” This hymn, written after her recovery, was among more than 80 from her pen, including “Take My Life and Let it Be,” and “Who Is on the Lord’s Side?”

Early American slaves, who strongly identified with Bible stories of Israel’s enslavement in Egypt, longed for their own journey to freedom across a political Jordan. They gave us “Deep River” and “I’ve got peace like a river” (which cites Isaiah 48:18).

Horatio Spafford used that phase in a hymn written after his four daughters perished when their ship went down. Only his wife survived. “When peace like a river” opens the hymn best known for its lines, “It is well, it is well with my soul.”

Eighteenth century English preacher Samuel Stennett was also inspired by “Jordan’s strormy banks,” seeing it as a symbol of passing to heaven. Although the Israelites’ entrance into the Promised Land only meant more warfare to conquer it—and there will be no conflict in Heaven—many still are comforted by this sense of finally “coming home.” Who of us doesn’t yearn for, as his hymn expresses it, “that happy place...when I shall see my Father’s face”?

Welsh preacher William Williams, who traveled an estimated 100,000 miles on foot and horseback in the mid-1700s, wrote an estimated 800 hymns for his people. One of the few translated from Welsh, “Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” has a concluding stanza that begins, “When I tread the verge of Jordan,” and addresses fears of death before landing “safe on Canaan’s side.”

Robert Lowry, a professor of literature, editor and pastor of several large Baptist churches, was inspired by Heaven’s river of life, “clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God” (Rev. 22:1-2). The words and tune to “Shall We Gather at the River” came to him one hot July afternoon in 1864 as he rested and had visions of Heaven. Some of his other 500 hymns include “I Need Thee Every Hour” and “Low in the Grave He Lay.”

I know there are other hymns that allude to rivers. They remind us that God often speaks in metaphors from nature to help us understand His attributes and ways. Even a body of water, laden with silt and home to fish, all of which He created, speak of Him.