Get Off Your Bike

(02/26/11)

Yesterday my daughter lost a tooth.  This morning she came to me so excited because the tooth fairy had come to visit.  After she had shown me the dollar that was left under her pillow she asked, “Mommy, when will my new tooth grow in?”  I smiled and said, “It probably already is, you just can’t see it yet.”  Then I thought about how God works.  He plants seeds and prepares the harvest, but it isn’t until that harvest is at its most beautiful that we take notice.  Most of the time we go through our days just trying to get to the other side… getting our kids ready and off to school so we can get to work… getting off work so we can get home and fix dinner… getting the dinner dishes done so we can get the kids in the bed… getting the kids in the bed so that we can have just a few minutes of peace before bedtime.  We live life in a cycle that keeps us from appreciating the processes that we must go through in order to grow and become the beautiful person that God wants to be.  Yet we can be sure that even when we don’t realize that God is at work, He is still there, planting seeds in our lives, and preparing the harvest He wants us to have.  He has not and will not give up on us, even when we are too busy to notice that He is working right beside us.  So the next time we are cycling through our day, and we see the field of flowers that we think we don’t have time for, we must do three things…

1. Stop and get off the bike 
2. Smell the flowers 
3. Thoughtfully consider what it took for those flowers to become as beautiful as they are.

It will take practice to stop when we are so used to moving full speed ahead, but we can do it if we try.

Genesis 8:22

Philippians 1:6