27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Luke 12:27
This little verse, tucked away in Luke’s Gospel, has been incredibly meaningful to me this summer in ways that I didn’t expect. It is one part of the teaching of Jesus about anxiety and worry, in which he gives us the only compelling antidote for our anxiety: faith. I knew these verses. I read them often, especially over the last year as I wrestled with my own anxiety. But this year, The Lord was pleased to provide a real, working illustration of this principle, right in my own front yard.
And it all started with a weed. Let me explain.
In early spring, we created new mulch beds in front of our home in order to beautify the front yard a bit. Through the years, I have grown to love bird watching (and so have our two house cats), so I placed two bird feeders in the mulch bed, right in front of the living room window, along with a suet feeder for the bigger birds. After a few days, we had all sorts of birds coming in the mornings and evenings to eat, and our family found so much joy in watching the birds! Almost immediately, I thought of this same passage in Luke 12. A little earlier, in verse 24 Jesus tells us “they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” It was a profound illustration for me of how God cares for each of us. The birds at my feeder didn’t wake up stressed out about food. They flew, and I placed their provision, and they found it. It was such a great reminder of God’s goodness – if he will do this for birds, Jesus says, how much more for us, who were created in God’s image!
This alone would have been a compelling lesson, and one for which I would have been thankful. But the Lord had more to teach me in my front yard, and not just with birds.
After a few weeks of putting seed out, we noticed that the birds didn’t like every type of seed in the mix equally. They would kick out the seed they didn’t like, and then that seed would germinate. I would spend time every couple of days pulling the weeds out of the mulch to keep the area clean. After a few weeks of doing this, I noticed one weed in particular that I just couldn’t pull. It grew in a crack between the sidewalk, the front of the porch, and the mulch bed, in an area just barely large enough for any seed to grow. The first day I saw it, I thought “it will die on its own, there’s probably no need to pull it.” I figured if I would just wait it out, it would eventually just die.
Except that it didn’t.
After a couple of days, it started to sprout some leaves that showed that it was not some ordinary weed. They were thick and almost tear-dropped shaped, and looked almost like the early stages of some variety of garden plant. When Ruth Anne saw it, she agreed. Gabriel looked at it as well, and we all decided to give it a little while, and wait and see what this weed became. Each day, we would see this weed, growing right next to the door of our front porch, and wonder what it may turn out to become.
In a few week’s time, we felt pretty certain that it was some type of flower. We used an app on our phone to try and identify it, and it showed that our weed was just that: a weed. We were a little disappointed, because we had hoped that it would turn out to be something spectacular. Instead, it seemed that we were giving space right next to the door to something that most people would just pull up.
But then, one flower started to grow on top of it. That flower, which had not opened yet, proceeded to get taller, and taller, and taller still until it finally grew to almost 6 feet! We were excited yet again, because we were convinced that it may be a sunflower! We would come home each day, waiting with anticipation to see if the bloom would open, and when it did, what it would look like!
Finally, on a Monday evening, the bloom opened to reveal a gorgeous sunflower! We all commented about how glad we were for not pulling it up earlier, and we enjoyed the fruit of our patience and God’s careful work with our little weed. And just when we thought it wouldn’t get any better, we started to notice more blooms starting! I had no idea that there were varieties of sunflowers with multiple heads of flowers, but ours was an example of such a flower!
More and more and even more blooms started, and the flower became more bush than flower, until no less than 20 flowers were blooming at any one time. The front of our house was beautifully adorned with a sunflower that I didn’t even know existed, planted in God’s providence right next to our home. My front porch is my place of peace, where I go outside to read the Word, and pray, and watch the birds. It was a joy to just sit and observe this flower. When the days of ministry were particularly stressful, I would sit and consider the sunflower. I would look at its blooms and marvel, and think “God put this right here, for us to enjoy.” You couldn’t NOT see it; it was tall, and wide, and impossible to miss. It was like a spiritual stop sign for me. When life got crazy, I could go outside, look at this sunflower, and remember the care of God!
After a time, the blooms started to fade, and the beautiful yellow flowers were replaced by sunflower seeds. We started to reflect on the goodness of that flower, and prepared to say goodbye to what had now become a friend to my soul. But as the flowers faded to seed, I came home from work one day to notice a whole little flock of beautiful yellow birds, lightly perched next to each flower. I had never seen these birds around the feeder before and, though I enjoy bird watching, I am still not very good at bird identification. Again, I consulted my smartphone, and discovered that these were American Goldfinches. They weren’t rare, but I had never seen them at the feeder before! I learned that the surest way to attract them is to plant tall thistles and bushes, and that they loved sunflowers.
And so, a whole little flock of goldfinches took up residence near my front yard, enjoying seeds I didn’t provide from a sunflower I didn’t plant. In God’s kindness, He saw fit to put a great gift in our front yard, and in so doing gave me multiple blessings that, had I not been paying attention, I would have totally missed. The goldfinches ate every seed, from every flower, and then discovered that the feeder had sunflower seeds as well. They stayed around, and continue to stay around.
There has been one more little-mini round of blooms on our weed, and the same cycle of blooms, and then birds, happened again, though with much less vigor as in the spring. During all these weeks, our family has navigated uncertainty and expectation, loss, fear, worry, doubt, joy, excitement and suffering; you know, a normal pastoral week! But through that, this little weed has been a constant friend to all of us, a gentle yet providential reminder that God cares for everything, every little thing, and that our work as His people is to take the time to notice. We are to look for the simple things, the quiet things, the ordinary means of grace God uses to reveal His resplendent glory. It may be in the quiet encouragement of a friend or church member. It may be in just the right song, at just the right time. Or it may be, in my case, in a weed, planted as it were by the very hand of God, growing in a difficult place, bearing fruit in due season, and being used to bring honor to the name of our Lord until the day its work is done.
Because that’s what ministry is too, right? We are planted in hard places, and we plant in hard places. God, by a miracle of His grace, causes growth in a way that defies explanation, and that reveals His glory. He does unexpected things, in unexpected ways, and His Gospel blooms and beautifies whatever place it is in. And then, just when you think He is done, His Word bears fruit that sustains and feeds. It was as though God painted a picture of ministry right outside my door, and used a weed to do it.
That, I think, is what Jesus is talking about when He says “consider the lilies.” When we stop, and patiently observe what He is up to, use our senses to observe His kind providence at work, we have great tools to handle anxiety and worry. We have great gifts for which to be thankful, and we are reminded of the great God who superintends it all. So much anxiety in my life is taken to task when I just. Slow. Down.
Maybe the same is true for you today. Maybe the way to take your anxious heart to task is similar to my own: consider the lilies. Go find a plant, and watch what God does with it. Watch the trees. Stop and observe a sunset. Somehow, just stop, just for a few moments, and see what God is doing. Then let yourself marvel at it! Everything God does is marvelous. Our problems come when we begin to look at regular things, maybe even ordinary things, as mundane. God intends His children to look at the world in wonder, and see Him as wonderful. Our anxieties spring, many times, from failing to see Him as sovereign AND wonderful. So, go stare at a weed; it may be just what your heart needs!
It's July now, and the heat of the summer is exacerbating the steady decline of my friend, the weed. It hangs sadly next to the front door, spent and slouched over. Just this last week, I had my family stand around our weed, and I led us in a prayer giving thanks to God for such a beautiful gift. To my shame, it’s likely the first time in my whole life I’ve thanked God for a plant (except for maybe blessings at dinner, where I eat said plants). I commented “I bet if people saw us doing this, they’d think we were crazy.” But you know what? Let them. When you drive by our home, you may see a weed, growing up and taking over our mulch bed, that now hangs sadly next to the steps as a sign that, as Solomon says, To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Our little weed is blooming again, albeit the flowers are fewer and fainter than they were when it was in its strength. From a distance, it looks sad and spent, a reminder of what once was. But when you look closer, you can still see a little life. I know that, in just a few days or weeks, our little weed will need to be cut down. I know that when passersby look, they see an almost dead weed next to our door.
But when I see it, I see grace, and God’s good gift to us, His children, to help remind us that sometimes, we just need to stop and consider the lilies.
Or in our case, consider the weed.