When you look at this picture what do I see? I see something very poignant in the tangled mess of barbed wire and bright red poppies. They're trying so desperately to break through and live how they were created to live but it's incredibly difficult. Sometimes I so relate to the struggle of the poppies, trying so hard to still be beautiful when their lives are a chaotic mess.
The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 comes to mind. The sower sowed seed which fell on all different types of soil, rocky, thorny, and ready. Verse 7 speaks of the seeds that "fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them." In verse 23 Jesus explains that "what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful."
How often has that been me? The Holy Spirit will speak something or I'll read something and instead of allowing it to change me, I get so caught up in worry or stress or busyness or idleness or who-knows-what that I miss what the Lord was trying to teach me. I let the Word of God get choked out by nothing, really.
I like to think of myself as that perfectly good soil all the time. But, in all honesty, I'm not. Sometimes there are lot of rocks and a lot of thorns. And you know how the good soil gets to be ready soil? It's tilled and plowed and worked until the rocks and the the thorns are taken out. I think if we take an honest look at our lives we'll see that we have more rocks and thorns than we'd like to admit. But instead of despairing, we can allow the Holy Spirit to pull out the thorns and get rid of the rocks.
And while we're in the process, don't lose heart. There may be seed that's started to grow and feels choked, but God is a master at doing the impossible with those that will let Him and He's patient enough to work the land. As this picture shows, God can create beauty in the midst of chaos. And he can heal even the thorniest of hearts.
