Consider the Tulips...I Mean Lilies!

Outside my kitchen window I have a small plot of earth containing tulips. Over the past several weeks I've been noticing an interesting thing about them as I've looked at them throughout the day...they turn their “faces”, if you will, in whatever direction the sun is shining!

Interesting... This reminded me of the passage in Luke 12 and particularly verses 26-27 which say:

"Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
"But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith!

Everyday the tulips open and point their faces toward the sun...and God made them absolutely beautiful! All they are doing is being what God designed them to be...tulips...and they are absolutely gorgeous in simply being themselves. In this they reflect the glory of God who created them...tulips.

I remember reading years ago in an Elisabeth Elliot book where she said something to the effect that when we are being exactly who and what God created us to be, we bring Him the most glory! God made each of us unique with different looks, abilities, talents, spiritual gifts, etc., all for His glory. It’s when we wish we were someone else, doing something else, and look like somebody other than who we are that we get all confused and discontent...and we worry...

Instead let’s consider the lilies...or the tulips...and praise the God who made us just as we are...and let’s glorify Him with our lives by lifting our faces every day – THIS day – toward Him...wherever He may be at any given moment in our day! Look for Him, my friends, because He is not very far from any of us... (Acts 17:27)! O, Praise Him!

Acts 17:22-29 (NASB)

Sermon on Mars Hill

22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.

23 "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD ' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.

24 "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;

25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;

26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,

27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.'

29 "Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.

MR