Consider The Lilies

Did I forget to tell you that God loved lilies? It is a well known and much overlooked fact of His life- as well known and overlooked as the lilies He loved. And it's a puzzling fact, too. Why lilies? Why especially lilies?

Maybe He loved lilies for being white, the way may people love roses for being red. Maybe it was because of the brilliant green of thelr long, slender stalks or the glorious darker green of their leaves. It could bhave been their simplicity, it might have been their commonness. It may have been because of all of that, and it just as easily could have been because of none of that at all. But it seems like He loved them.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus pointed to lilies as examples of a splendour superior to that of Solomon's He considered them to be better dressed than kings- lilies, that is. He did not apparently blish or stutter when he commanded his followers to consider them.

After all, he had a certain fondness for sparrows, and did not consider their care and feeing beneath the dignity of God- though God's care and dignity is beyond the comprehension of man.

But... this is where the lover of lilies throws us a curve: He loved men. It was to the end that they might be saved that he came. This man who looked at flowers and loved them, also looked at an arrogant young human and loved him. He who rejoiced in God's providence for sparrows miraculously fed a crowd of 5,000 people. His attention and affection was not won by the attractive and the beautiful; His glance and His love made things and people attractive and beautiful.

And even if someone would doubt the accounts of His miracles, I can testify myself that I had never seen a lily until He showed me one. I had never heard a sparrow until His voice unplugged my ears.

So, all those things He did that we call "miracles" became believable to us bcause Christ operated out of love- and love has a height and depth and breadth and length that reaches beyond the dimension of mere understanding.

And while reasons may be found within His love, no reason would be able to contain His love.

It is possible that He loved lilies because He is love, and that He feeds sparrows for the same reason. And Jesus Christ is, for me, the evidence of God's unreasonable and unsolicited attentiveness, His unearned favor, His incomprehensible love.

Did I forget to tell you that He loved liles?

--Taken from "The World As I Remember It: Through the Eyes of a Ragamuffin" by Rich Mullins