Devotion 330 - extraordinary

It looked like any other flower in any bowl, 
but I knew precisely what it was.

It was a bribe.

I had told my son that even though he had spent his own money on this new video game, he did not have license to play it all afternoon. One hour, that was his limit. 

I came aware of the clock ticking on the wall and aware I would soon hear a large, long frustrated exhale out of my son, but he planted the bribe there on the table.  

It was a peony that said, “I was outside playing, I was thinking of you and yes, I will come up from my game around an hour-ish.  Enjoy the flower before you look at the clock.”

It worked.  I went and got my camera.  I snapped the one he had gently placed in a bribe bowl and then I went outside to see all the others.

Funny… peonies.  For the better part of the year they hide underground.  There is barely any evidence to show they were there or that they would come again.  They look like ordinary sticks in ordinary dirt, with no promise of beauty or fragrance.

Ordinary.

The word had been stuck in my head for days.  I had all but forgotten about a certain family.  An ordinary family some would say.  They had adopted from China, almost at the exact same time we did.  But theirs was a different story than ours; they had chosen to adopt a child listed as terminally ill.  I remember praying for them.  

I remember admiring their amazing courage.  I had lost track until their story came back.  Three years, and thousands of prayers and a new heart had been matched to their precious girl.  I picked up their story once again.

Her mother wrote with an elegance and grace I have rarely found.  She described in the most beautiful detail, the call, the tears, the waiting and the arrival of her daughter’s new heart.

It flew to them, one would imagine on wings of angels, but in reality in an ordinary cooler, wheeled out of a helicopter and into surgery.

The cooler holding a life in the form of a new heart;   the dirt holding the promise of peonies.  I decided as I wiped the tears from my eyes, I would look harder and longer at ordinary to find the extraordinary.

It was harder than I thought.  You see life for the most part is made up of lots of ordinary.  We wake for most days in our same house, to our same family, to do our same work and fold our same laundry.  I have read the same three books to my youngest daughter for the last three weeks.  I make the same breakfast, drink the same tea, drive the same car and clean the same counters.

Nothing about this ordinary seemed the least bit extraordinary, and I wondered, perhaps the extra part of ordinary is reserved for people who take bigger risks or pray bigger prayers.

I have never been a risk taker.  I like comfortable and perhaps I like ordinary.   I set my search aside assuming this was a fool’s errand.  I surmised that I would enjoy smelling my peonies and reading my blogs.

Then I sat in Sunday school teaching about Samson.  I had two boys and one little girl amazed at the story of Samson defeating lions with his bare hands.  

Finally, I asked, “Why was Samson so incredibly strong?”  The little blue-eyed boy sitting next to me did not hesitate, “Because he worked out!!!” 

“No,” I quickly corrected, “Samson was an ordinary man who God had made extraordinarily strong.” 

I withdrew for just a moment.  The simplicity of the message God had written overtook me.  He came as an ordinary man, to do the extraordinary.  When He left this earth, He knew we would need him desperately, so He places the hope of extraordinary within us.  His Spirit would come to reside within these ordinary vessels to give us eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to serve. 

You see beloved, we have to look at the peony 
AND the dirt, 
we have to look at the heart 
AND the cooler to see the whole message.  

Every one of us is simply a vessel.  We complain about the vessel, perhaps our vessels are too big, too wrinkly, perhaps a part or two does not function like it used to. 

But a vessel, an ordinary vessel is all it is.  It is just a skin around a spirit.  That Spirit, that glorious Holy Spirit is alive within us pointing us to the extraordinary within the ordinary of our lives.  

He points us to the hurting store clerk with whom we can have a friendly conversation.  He leads us to the friend that needs a word of encouragement and the child that needs prayer. 

He reminds us our calling is not to a job or a list of chores but to Him, to live for, to love and to serve.  The peonies get it; they do not regret their dark, cold days.  They are just moments preparing them for their days to shine in the sun and radiate His beauty. 

He is storing up many of those beauty days for us too Beloved.  So let us not regret the dirt under our fingernails and the hurts in our hearts.  He is using them all, preparing us all to radiate Him. 

 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecc. 3:11