The Secret to a Beautiful Life

   
How are you and Jesus doing?

I'm standing in this field. It's big, almost endless, and full of ten thousand flowers. I'm right among them, the tender sprigs of grass around my feet, curling between my toes. Colors shine in every flowery face, soft pinks, pure whites, pointed scarlets. When the sun comes out, it nearly blinds me with light.

Every flower represents a different person in my life, someone I met, someone I touched, someone's name I remember or forget. Other flowers are tasks, hobbies, jobs, that I call mine.

My family's there. My friends. Faces I've seen but once. Then there's my writing, my blog, my photography, my piano, my sign language, my job giving the cows water every night. And hundreds and hundreds of others.

The flowers make up my life, everything I do. Everyone I meet.

And I'm running through the fragrant bouquets with a tiny water bucket. With the sun beating down, I try to make sure every flower has enough water to stay alive. I spend a little time caring for one blossom then run to the next. All day, all my days, every moment. I'm filling the bucket, emptying it, trying again.

 But when I stop and look at my field, I see the truth: the flowers are dying.

There's the petunia in the corner of my field that I can't reach. Its leaves are drooping.

The sunflower that I keep watering and watering is dropping seeds like tears, its face falling away from the sun.

There are friends I can't seem to love. Hobbies that I abandon. Jobs I do half-way.

I can't keep up with life. The smell of fresh wind and flower perfume fades to hard ground and arid heat.

So I try to run faster.

And all the while, everyone else has their own fields. They look at mine and smile. They say I'm doing a wonderful job. I'm a great Christian and writer and sister and worker. They say they wish they were like me.

I could laugh. I'm panting and tired, and my field is slowly drooping, kissing the soil.

I can't run anymore. So finally, I'm stopping.

I'm dropping my water bucket. I'm lifting my head. I'm raising my hands.

Because I can't make life work. I can't fix relationships. I can't do anything.

Jesus can.

He is the rain cloud that billows over the flowers He planted in my life. Big, fat drops of rain pour out. They wash the dust off my face. They moisten my hair.

I could dance here, Him doing the work I cannot. When I rest in Jesus, He brings completion, victory, blossoms to dying plants. I'm not abandoning the field; I'm letting Him make it thrive.

Because somehow, it becomes our field.

My work, my friends, all these flowers, they don't define me; Jesus does. They become His and mine, us together. Our work. Our friends. Our flowers.

I do everything for Him, not to merely keep seeds from dying. I let Him water our flowers, and I just raise my hands in surrender, in rest, in praise.

I find shalom in Him. Total completeness in Him. The way things were intended to be. It's a relationship.

So how are me and Jesus doing?

Maybe it's called abiding. I'm not sure. I don't know how to "do this" at all.

I'm just tired of trying. And when we rest, there's this sweet dance we enter in. It makes the flowers bloom the way He intended them to. It makes the air swirl with His laughter, His fragrance.

So put down your water bucket. Go find Jesus, and love Him.

This transforms ordinary life into something beautiful.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

- Romans 5:1-2

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