Passersby stopped their cars. Some actually drove in the big circle driveway, walked up the steps to the porch, and knocked on the kitchen door.
“May we look at your flower garden?” they asked.
Daddy’s and Mama’s garden was massive, stretching between the mown lawn and the corn field, its woven artistry of greens and reds and yellows visible from every south window of the old yellow house. It abounded with fruits and vegetables – strawberries in June, green beans in July, sweet corn in August, and pumpkins in September. But at a distinct time of the hot Michigan summer, the garden was amass with papery-petalled blooms: beautiful red poppies.
Daddy’s and Mama’s lives paralleled that garden. Like their garden, their lives were brimming with ever-bearing vibrancy – of honor and service to God!
Those seasons were times of sunshine and rain. Of planting and reaping. Although well-remembered, they were summers of times long passed. Those days of poppy gardens and the two who tended them are gone.
Today, nothing remains of the beautiful flower garden or of the vivid red poppies. For a few years, a little stem, here and there, popped up, but now, withered stubble covers the ground where the poppies once bloomed. And like the garden, nothing remains here on earth of the vibrant lives of Daddy and Mama.
“All men [and women] are like grass, and all their glory is like the [poppies] of the field; the grass withers and the [poppies] fall, but the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:6,8)
Yes, His word stands forever. It is powerful. It is mighty. It is beautiful. It does not die. It withstands every season, every storm, every fire, and every trial. It is permeated with vibrancy – the vibrancy of life.
So again today, I will open the Word and let it fill me with its unending message. I desire the Word to reflect in my life such vividness that passersby stop and stare, glimpsing God’s glory in all of its beauty.
They asked Daddy and Mama, “May we look at your flower garden?”
I hope they ask of me, “Please tell me about your Jesus I so vividly see.”
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