Beauty in the Desert

“The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom” (Isaiah 35:1).
 
A little girl walking in a garden noticed a particularly beautiful flower. She admired its beauty and enjoyed its fragrance. “It’s so pretty!” she exclaimed. As she gazed on it, her eyes followed the stem down to the soil in which it grew. “This flower is too pretty to be planted in such dirt!” she cried. So she pulled it up by its roots and ran to the water faucet to wash away the soil. It was not long until the flower wilted and died.

When the gardener saw what the little girl had done, he exclaimed, “You have destroyed my finest plant!” She said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t like it in that dirt.” The gardener replied, “I chose that spot and mixed the soil because I knew that only there could it grow to be a beautiful flower.”

There is a lesson here. Sometimes we dislike the circumstances into which God has placed us. However, we may fail to realize that God is using this place with its pressures, trials, and difficulties to bring to us a new spiritual beauty. Contentment comes when we accept graciously what God is doing and determine to bloom in the soil where God has planted us. The prophet Isaiah teaches us about the joy that is ours when the Lord’s streams bring refreshment to our parched lives causing us to blossom in beauty (Isaiah 35:1-2).
 
Yes, indeed. God is up to something beautiful in your life—do not pull away from it but, instead, rejoice in it!
 
Devotedly Yours,
 Pastor Ron