Fall is bulb planting season. It’s the time to plant bulbs and the time to divide them. I love planting bulbs. When I look at them, they are just formless blobs. There’s nothing pretty or promising about them. They are really downright ugly, but then the miraculous happens. Ugly little blobs planted in the fall turn into gorgeous spring flowers. I would have a hard time believing it, if I hadn’t seen it before.
Doesn’t look like much.
I think Jesus sees us that way. He doesn’t see the bulb; he sees the flower. He’s not concerned with what our faith walk looks like right now. He knows the potential even if we don’t. He can see the blooms that come from the bulb and he knows that bulbs bloom over and over again, season after season.
One of my favorite examples of this is Peter. I love Peter. He was a hot head and he was always running his mouth, but Jesus knew what he would become. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon. He was the first disciple to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. Right after this, Jesus renamed him Petra which means the rock. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says that “upon this rock I will build my church.” Now Jesus loved nicknames and liked to kid around with the disciples. He called James and John the sons of thunder. Did Peter think he was kidding around? Did the other disciples think he was kidding around? Were they scratching their heads thinking that Jesus had to be joking? This guy was a rock?
We really don’t get anymore insight from the text about what everyone was thinking. Peter goes on to fall asleep at Gethsemane when Jesus asked him, John and James to keep watch with him. Then of course there’s the famous denial. Jesus tells Peter he will deny him three times before the cock crows. Peter assures Jesus that he would never deny him. But he does. At this point, it looks like Jesus may have been wrong about Peter, but thankfully Jesus is never wrong.
After the resurrection, Jesus forgives Peter and after the ascension, Peter becomes a force for Christ to be reckoned with. Peter is there praying with the other believers at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit arrives on the scene and then he is close to unstoppable. He comes out of the room where all of the believers were hiding in fear and preaches to the crowd about repentance and forgiveness and adds 3,000 new believers to the church that day. (I guess it was the first mega church.) He goes on to heal people in the name of Christ. He boldly testifies at the council about Jesus. Peter becomes fearless in the spread of Christianity and an important leader in the new church. Peter is the one who takes the message to the people who weren’t Jewish, the Gentiles. He is imprisoned at one point and an angel comes and breaks him out of prison. He becomes the rock, just like Jesus predicted.
Peter’s story gives me reassurance. It lets me know that Jesus doesn’t really care where I have been and isn’t too concerned with what I look like right now. What he does care about is where I’m going and what I can be and he’s willing to take my hand and lead the way. I may be a bulb now, but I’m on my way to becoming a blooming flower. Care to join me?
It’s hard to believe they came from a brown blob!
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂