Life in the midst of so much death. Hope in the hopelessness. Trust in spite of fear. These are the things God keeps laying on my heart. With so much in the world seeming to get worse — journalists getting beheaded before the world on youtube, the Iraqi people being forced out by fully funded terrorists, personal privacy being invaded, people dying too young because of bad decisions by themselves or others, disease spreading rampantly because people don’t have the proper health care, and so many more things that I could never even list it, it seems hard to think that there is enough good in the world for it to make a difference.
But if you stop and look, you can find it. It’s in the infant eyes of the African American twin boys sitting next to me, curiously glancing at the beautiful stranger (cause I know that’s what they think I am). It’s in the conversations with a friend who gives you some laughs and smiles. The glory of the first golden light hitting the trees as the birds flit back and forth singing their morning song. It’s in the flowers growing out of the concrete. Where there seems to be no way life could emerge from the hard concrete, there is beauty and life. This is a lesson God taught me with some purple petunias.
This summer I noticed a single, purple flower pushing out from the crack between the brick and cement in my driveway. I was wowed by the fact that it found anywhere to put roots. What has amazed me and stopped me in my tracks the other morning was how much it has grown over the summer. What started out as a single stem is now a full blooming bunch. (Picture included – come on you guys know me well enough by now) It was beautiful. And God whispered to me, “See I can make things grow where others say it is impossible. I can bring beauty from nothing. Life from cement.”
So while it is still easy to get caught up in the horrible mess that the world has gotten itself into, there is hope. and His name is Jesus. He is the way, the truth, and the LIFE. He brings beauty from ashes. He is hope of the hopeless. And that is something I will hold onto now and next year as I venture into some pretty hopeless places. That that hope lives IN me and works THROUGH me.
“The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the LORD’S favor has come.” Luke 4:18 (See Isaiah 61:1)
As I venture to NYC today, I am going to look for the beauty in the city. For the life in the darkness. For the hope in the hopelessness. Because even the concrete jungle can’t shut out or hide the light of the world.
