Fret Not

I am presently meditating my way through the book, Everyday Glory: The Revelation of God In All of Reality, by Gerald R. McDermott. The author’s primary goal is to point out “types” of the gospel that exist in all of creation, for all of us to see, all the time. This is one of those books that I am likely to read again, immediately. The principle reason being that I am so personally encouraged about my own life through the content that McDermott presents. Let me give you an example. This is from the third chapter:

So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:28-30).

Permit me to paraphrase Jesus in a pedestrian way: “The world of nature is constantly talking, reinforcing what I, Jesus, am teaching you.” Little wonder that Jesus’ parables regularly use things in nature to illustrate kingdom principles. They point to what happens to houses built on sand and houses built on rocks when storms with floods come; they point to trees that produce good fruit and trees that produce bad fruit; what happens to seeds thrown onto a path, rocky soil, thorny soil, and good soil; they refer to tiny seeds that produce huge bushes; they evoke the way that leaven spreads itself through a lump of dough and the way weeds and wheat grow together in a field. He granted that many people see nothing about God in any of these things of nature, but that for those with eyes to see, there are “sermons in stones,” as Shakespeare put it, lessons about the kingdom of God.

That last phrase in Matthew 6:30 sticks with me right now, “O you of little faith?”

Jesus’ intention in His teaching was to attach a type to His lesson so that it could be remembered by the disciples. Feeling insecure? Well, do you see that flower over there? Guess who made that flower and Who sustains that flower? And that flower is more royally dressed up than Solomon ever could be.

What is the take-away here?

The point is that God has put before us so many reminders in Creation about His kindness, mercy, provision and promises that we are to take each one–personal. They are used by God to serve as a comfort and as an edification.

There are flowers everywhere! They are in planted in our gardens, growing wild along the highways, in planters inside the doctor’s office, painted on our dishes, embroidered on our pillows, screened onto our clothing, pressed between pages of our books, worn at our weddings and displayed at our funerals. And flowers are just one type.

This means that when we walk into a grocery store and pass that little floral section in the corner, our faith in God should be more bolstered than if we walked into a bank where we had a million dollars in our account!