[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Sunday, July 28, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day once again.  I hope that, for those of us in North America who receive these messages as well as the wisdom gems and pearls, that you had a good worship service today along with some congregational fellowship, as I surely did.

Judyann Grant lives in New York (Don't know whether it's the Big Apple or New York State's other area.)  Anyway his/her article for today is entitled "Trumpet Vine Troubles" and is rendered as follows:

Every summer I face the same gardening dilemma:  a tangle of trumpet vines that grew up and out of the center of a barberry bush.  The leggy stems created a knotty mess in the otherwise neat shrub.  I couldn't imagine why our home's former owners had planted the vine there.  Since the trumpet vines were unsightly, every summer I undertook the difficult task of pulling them out.

Now, along with deep red foliage and winter berries, a barberry bush is distinguished by its spiny stems.  You can't get close to it without getting jabbed by the needle-sharp thorns.  When working near the shrub, I wore my husband's thick leather gloves.  Of course, wearing the too-big gloves made it difficult to grasp the slender trumpet vines.  This yearly task was both a literal and figurative pain--until this past summer.

Numerous out-of-town guests, grandchildren coming for sleepovers and back-to-back writing deadlines consumed my time.  Many outdoor projects fell by the wayside.  Pulling the trumpet vines from out of the barberry bush was one of my neglected summer chores.

Then one late August morning, as I stood at the kitchen window waving goodbye to my daughter, my eye caught a glimpse of orange in the barberry bush.  Going outside to investigate the splotch of color, I was shocked to see the pesky trumpet vine in full, beautiful bloom.  Leafy green vines cascaded from the center of the barberry bush as they always had, but now the tip of each vine was crowned with a multitude of vibrant orange trumpet-shaped blossoms.  Left to its own, the vine did what it had struggled to do for twelve summers:  flourish and bloom.

The trumpet vine taught me a lesson about one way to approach some of life's dilemmas.  Before, when I was faced with an unwelcome difficulty, I tended to pick, pull and fuss over the problem, aggravating not only myself but everyone around me.  When I learned to step back and put some distance between the "thorn" and myself, predicaments usually worked themselves out.  And, often the results that were allowed to arrive naturally were far more perfect than any I could have tried to force.

Who knows? Maybe the former owners deliberately planted the trumpet vine in the midst of that barberry bush in order to bring a touch of beauty to an otherwise prickly situation.

And there you have a seasonal article for this Lord's Day which I hope you all enjoyed.  If you read it again, maybe you can find some situations between this article and your own Christian life experiences.  I know that I can.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul