Cidra's Flowers

At the beginning of the Summer I preached a sermon on the Parable of the Seeds. I spoke on how I may know logically from science class and grade school projects which involved growing a seed in a glass jar but that once the seed went into the ground I really had no idea what was going on. I mentioned the my daughter had received a packet of seeds promising if planted to yield a butterfly garden. Once we got settled here in Belmont, we planted the seeds in a half barrel floor bed next to the drive. Once we put those seeds in the ground I had no idea what was going on beneath the surface. I did not know if the seeds were actually sprouting. I did not know when they started growing or when to expect them to begin to poke their heads out of the dirt.
At the time I preached this sermon not one single little green sprout had shown itself. But my daughter checked the barrel ever time we went out to the car hoping today that her little flowers were growing. The point of the sermon I preached and the parable is that God is working to further the kingdom. The kingdom will grow. The kingdom will flourish. And much like the mustard seed (another parable I preache don that morning) the growth may astonish us all. We may not really know how but God is working. Just as you don't know what is going on beneath the soil when you plant a seed, but you have to trust that it is beginning to grow and that someday you will see the "fruits" of that growth, we trust that even when we do not see God working we need to trust that God is working and that God knows what God is doing even when we don't.
I preached this sermon before the plants had even started to show their little green heads. I have to say after using them as an illustration, I prayed that they would grow into flowers. I along with my daughter watched as something began to grow in the barrel and again I prayed the small green plants sprouting were flowers and not weeds. Or at least flowering weeds. But as you can see in the picture flowers did grow. The flowers were not the plethora of brightly colored butterfly attracting flowers the package promised but they are a pair of plants which have beautiful white blooms. Cidra loves them. She calls them her flowers and goes over and smells them every time we go out. It just goes to show God is working. The results may not be what we expected. It may take longer than we wanted get any results. But God is working. And the results are just what is needed. Cidra did not need a whole barrel of flowers to make her happy. She is not at all disappointed that there are not purple and blue and red and yellow flowers. She is perfectly happy with her two plants and their delicate white flowers.
When we rely on God. What we get is what we need. The kingdom will flourish and be beautiful, even if it does not look as we expected.
My daughter's little white flowers are perfect.
God was working beneath the soil, even when I did not understand how or what was happening. But what I did not know was God was growing a beautiful smile and a very much unexpected (at least unexpected by me) for my daughter and a little bit more faith and trust for me.