When the blossoms are blooming and the buds are budding, how often do you hear those awe-struck words, “I just LOVE this time of year!”? We can all celebrate that it is now that time of year again, with flowering pink cherry trees and more, being lovely flowering reminders of the beauty of God’s creation almost everywhere you look, including on the way into the Twin Falls parking lot.
I was trying to get a good picture of one of these trees, but on all sides, the beauty is marred by bare, dead-looking branches under the blossoms. And when you start looking closely, you start seeing the imperfections and damage on the trunk and limbs there as well, despite the glorious display in the blossoms. Have you noticed how briefly these trees share their beauty? Then after the blooms fade, it’s just a rather ordinary looking tree.
Does this limitation, though, or the dead branches or other damage, change the fact that we get to enjoy this kind of passing glory each year, even if only for a moment? Then I realized that these imperfections might be part of the point when God creates this kind of beauty. How often do we in our more ordinary lives, end up focusing on the naked branches and wounds in life, and miss the beauty along the way, or focus on how fleeting the moments of glory are, instead, grumbling of the preponderance of the mundane?
Even in the Garden of Eden, there still had to be dirt, bugs and shadows (though the thorns, brambles and mosquitoes MIGHT have only come later with sin coming into the world…)—but that’s not what we focus on with the Garden of Eden, is it? When we lose our focus on paradise, we just might realize that ordinary life is full of limitations, dirt and brambles—but through it all, WE get to choose on what we focus!
St. Paul reminds us of this fact, and the power of where we choose to focus in his letter to the Philippians (find it yourself- you’ll likely find other great stuff along the way!). Of course if we still choose to focus on the dead branches and dirt—God’s blessings, beauty and glory are still there– even when we keep ourselves from seeing it.
On what are you choosing to focus today? The flowers these days make it easy—but God’s blessings are still there for those who have eyes to see, even when the rain comes.
Pastor Jim