The Paradox of Faith

The other day, I am at a restaurant enjoying lunch with some friends.  On the table is the above vase of flowers. 

Okay...it wasn't a vase...it was a plastic cup, because I eat at only the classiest places ~ as I am sure you can tell from the state of the wooden table on which the vase - I am plastic cup - sat upon.

Okay...maybe calling them "flowers" is a bit of a stretch.  This particular species of God's creation seems to occupy that place somewhere between a dandelion and a mum.  It sort of looks like the kind of flower your four-year-old would bring home clinched so tightly in her hand that some of the flowers start to wilt and droop under the pressure.

Which is actually what the above flowers were doing.  Some looked as healthy as healthy could be... others a bit tired, hanging it's flower-head like it was studying the wooden table.

Yup...been there...had that kind of day.  The kind of day when there are moments of joy and times I just feel a bit deflated side-by-side.  The kind of day when someone says something that causes my soul to stir, only to have someone else come in with unsolicited and unhelpful advice.  The kind of day when you are not sure whether to put a check mark in the good or bad day column ~ so you put perhaps put a check in both columns just to be safe.  Or maybe if you are a plastic cup of flower empty kind of person maybe you just put the check in the bad column. 

The paradox of faith invites us into the messiness of life.  So much of the art of living for me is about seeing God both in the good, perky, beautiful flowers kinds of moments.  Moments like hanging out with my wife on Friday night or kids getting good grades or just laughing kind of moments.  Then, there are those flowers are not going to make it kind of moments - when I feel discouraged because I can't be all things to all people and have to make tough choices or see someone I care about struggling or suffering. 

In the plastic cup of life right now we all have flowers that seem to brighten and some that seem to be on their way to the great flower show in the sky, because I am assuming if all dogs go to heaven so do all flowers too.  Just makes sense right?  (He types sarcastically...then feels the need to make sure the reader knows he is being sarcastic...and then over explains this in a parenthetical detour). 

In the plastic cup of life right now some things seem to be going well and others things not so much.

In the plastic cup of life right now...there might even be beauty in the blossom as well as in those that are now past their prime...but still radiate the beauty of life.  You see the more I looked at the plastic cup of flowers, the more I saw a truth about life and faith and God.  There is a holiness to all of it and God holds of it...us...you and me together. 

Then...lunch came...which was delicious.  And in that moment there was more than a trace of God's grace in my life.

Blessings ~~