GLOWING!

As my spring weeding chores brought me to our home's three azalea bushes, I had a special treat as I crawled under the bush whose yellow blooms seemed extraordinarily brilliant this year. They weren't just “mellow yellow.” Instead, they seemed almost golden as they peaked in their two-week blooming cycle. I thought of the saying, “Spring's first green is gold, its hardest hue to hold.” I'd always associated that with daffodils, tulips, and other early-bloomers, but this time the azaleas illustrated that idiom—and, for me, a Biblical mystery.

My mind went to the first chapter of John's “Revelation” of images of Heaven. He related a vision that included seven golden lamp stands, someone “like a son of man” with a golden sash around his chest, eyes like a glazing fire, feet glowing like bronze in a furnace, stars in his right hand, and a “face Iike the sun shining in all its brilliance.” I cannot imagine how overwhelmed John felt in trying to describe this otherworldly setting of bright and blinding symbolic beauty.

As stunning as our yard's yellow azaleas were this year, they barely whispered the symbolic glory that John experienced in his “revelation.” But as I crawled around in the dirt underneath the bushes, grabbing the inevitable weeds in my yearly flower bed scrub-out, I realized God might be whispering a message to me.

My first thought was that old spiritual cliché: Bloom where you are planted. In other words, in whatever situation or circumstance, in nurturing or difficult relationships, represent Christ. That's the message the apostle Paul continually emphasized in his letters to the early Christian churches. One of my favorite passages with that message is in his letter to the church at Philippi. In our English translations, it's one long and complicated sentence, but every portion glows with golden truth:

And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.(1:9-11, boldface emphasis added)

The words I boldfaced are my choices for “golden words”--language that expresses the beauty and holiness of the God who created us. The One who defies human description (as John experienced) but who has created us to bring Him glory through everyday, yet extraordinary Christ-focused lives.

To glow for Him.