God makes everything beautiful
March 17th, 2024 – Communion Meditation
With all our comings and goings in recent years, for several winters we forgot to prune the crabapple tree that sits right outside our front window. I usually remember to prune when I see the early blossoms starting to form. But by the time those are visible, the season for pruning is already long gone. This year I wrote myself a reminder to do it at the start of the New Year. If we hadn’t followed master gardener instructions on how to prune crabapples, I would have felt like we were being super mean to the tree. I winced and whispered words of comfort to our unsuspecting tree as we lopped off bough after bough and twig after twig, leaving just five or six of the largest branches. For almost two months, our tree stood there stark and bare, daily making me wonder if we’d gone too far. Then a week or two ago, clusters of gorgeous pale pink blossoms started emerging, not in just one small area but all over this wounded tree. Life is springing up all over as our crabapple is being transformed before our very eyes!
Ecclesiastes 3:11 in The Message translation tells us that God makes everything beautiful in itself and in its time. There are so many lessons we can learn from this one small story. We can dust for God’s fingerprints all over God’s beautiful creation and in our own lives! What I’m sensing the Lord reminding us today is that even when things look stark and bare, God is still doing a deep work of transformation from the inside out. Even when we can’t see the hope, God is still causing life and growth to happen. Even when we feel stale or dry, God is bringing forth beauty beyond our wildest dreams.
Lord, help us to remember that you are always doing a good, holy, and beautiful work, whether we can see or feel it or not. We trust you, Jesus! Help us to trust you more! Amen.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and said, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Eat together) Again, Jesus took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Drink together)
