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.

CATERPILLAR EYES

We have an ongoing private joke in our family about people who are obsessed with their appearance. Decades ago, for reasons we've forgotten, a visitor to our home went into great detail about the products she used for her hair. “My hair is very important to me,” she said, flipping her long locks. Since then, whenever my husband or I need to chide each other about vanity, we borrow that phrase, “My (fill in the blank) is very important to me.”

That inside-the-family joke came back to me recently when I was browsing the newspaper coupon inserts for products we might use. So many for hair color and makeup! But the one for an eye cosmetic made me think of another inside-the-family joke, about overdone eye makeup and false eyelashes which we call “caterpillar eyes.” You get the picture, I presume, with multiple black insect feet. This ad was for not one, but TWO products for “gorgeous eye looks.” One product was called the “lash blast amplify primer” and the other (to follow #1) the usual black sweep. Oh, “vegan” in origin, in case that concerns you.

A few days later the newspaper's entertainment insert featured the latest movie about a weird woman obsessed with Dalmatian dogs. You know the one: half of her hair black, the other white, and what we call (in the same jesting way) raccoon eyes. Yes, “Cruella.” Believe it or not, she's not an original. Probably an ancient, idol-worshiping queen named Jezebel was. Her story about challenging her prophets of Baal against Elijah's God took up quite a bit of space in 1 Kings 16-18. When her pagan priests “lost” the battle of the gods, she threatened to kill Elijah.

The rest of the story comes in 2 Kings 9 , fourteen years after her husband Ahab's death in battle. She wielded considerable influence over her son Jehoram, living in the palace. When war roared at the city's gates, she piled up her hair in the queenly fashion and painted her eyes with antimony, a metal we now know to be toxic but was prized for accenting one's eyes. The warrior who took the city, Jehu, wasn't impressed by Mrs. Raccoon Eyes, and she was killed. It gets gory from there, but the story is in 2 Kings 9:30-37.

As a product of the Depression and impoverished farm life, my mother didn't grow up with a lot of cosmetics savvy. Her motto would have been “A little powder and a little paint make a pretty little girl look like what she ain't.” She didn't have a chest of “war paint” in the bathroom drawers. She stretched out her tiny sample of lipstick from the door-to-door cosmetics salesperson as long as she could. Thus I grew up without a lot of makeup savvy and still am a minimalist. Maybe that's why I find double-duty eye makeup rather amusing. I still remember the day my teen daughter convinced me to have a “makeover” at a local cosmetics store. Oh, the array of products. I bought just a lipstick. As we got outside into the sunlight, my daughter turned to “painted”-me and said, “Mom, you look like a clown!”

I'm not against makeup and some of us need a lot of help! But I think the balance was expressed by a lady who was the opposite of Jezebel (and Cruella). The Bible calls her Mrs. Noble. She had a work ethic that went from sunrise to sundown. She raised kids who loved her. She didn't fret about the future and spoke with wisdom. Her husband said of her: “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

Yes, our cultures are thousands of years apart, but I think she would have put this whole cosmetics industry in perspective. Somehow, I don't see her viewing her world through caterpillar eyes.

(In thinking about cosmetics on Bible times, remember they didn't have handy bathing facilities to stay clean and, well, smell good. Thus perfumers and makers of cosmetics had essential businesses of their times. But there's a line where societal norms pass over to obsession. I think that's why the prophets mentioned overdone makeup in negative ways as symbols of national deterioration. Two more references on that: Jeremiah 4:30 and Ezekiel 23:40. None of the prophets wrote best-sellers, but they said what God felt needed to be said.)