Hot bread and flowers
How is it that a flower unfurling lifts my heart? After the stress of moving, we unpacked the last box and then that pernicious bug, Covid, dared grab me after I had been double-vaccinated, but every day, my garden is a healing place for me.
If I didn’t know Christ, it would still bring me joy but oh, how the joy is intensified when I see it as a gift from my heavenly Father.
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,” 1 Chronicles 16:11-12
Satan, that expert pilferer, constantly tries to impoverish us; one sneaky lie is that the greatest joys are outside of God. Church history is strewn with tales of constricting religiosity – the kind which outlaws music or dance or football or parties, the kind which tries to squeeze the God of the galaxies into the confines of a church service.
I love my church but God is bigger than its walls. His sweeping, colourful brushstrokes are displayed all around us, his is the honeysuckle fragrance of a summer evening, his is the salty air blowing away stresses on a Cornish coast. All the textures are his - the softness of a baby’s skin, warm sand under foot, a labrador’s silky ear! That’s before we even get started on music - the intricacy of Bach or irish music that sets your whirling or jazz that makes you weep and soar at the same time. All the good gifts come from God.
That’s why loss and grief is never the end of the story. All the joy I found in Trevor came from God and so is never ultimately lost. All the joys lead back to God.
All good gifts come from God. As theologians say, there is saving grace (put simply, that’s the wonder of all we have in our Saviour, Jesus) but there is also common grace – which is all the rich goodness of God accessible in creation – whether it is the flashing, tinsel wings of a dragonfly or a tin of brownies from a friend. Common might sound dull – it is anything but.
When I am weary or heart-sore and my brain isn’t helped by words, I am especially grateful for common grace, for garden flowers and kind friends and kayaking on the river on bright water.
I have been musing on the story of Elijah who fled to a cave, at the end of himself. You can imagine Elijah sobbing in the dust, scared and tired and sad. I resonate. Does God tell him to pray harder? No, God provides hot bread for him and tells him to rest. Such tenderness – that God would bake bread for Elijah and that the bread is warm. What beats freshly baked bread? And it’s only after Elijah has eaten and rested that God speaks to him.
If you are weary at the end of a hard year, let your Father point you to the hot bread, to the places where he will restore your soul until you can hear him speak to you. And remember that every good gift is his tender gift to you.
