The world is constantly talking about climate change, and the context is mostly wrapped in fear, and fuelled by fear. It's a fear that forgets God and His promises, that He is in charge.
But this blog-post is not about fear, but a message of hope and confidence.
The climate is changing all the time. In the more than 2 decades I have lived on the African continent at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, we have seen all kinds of changes.
One year, I remember being over-run by hundreds of fluffy caterpillars that insisted on travelling through our house from the back door to the front door every evening for several weeks. In the many years we had lived in the bush, we had not seen anything like it before. The typical reaction might have been 'oh its because of climate change and the food sources, habitats and normal environments are being impacted'. However, after talking to someone who had lived in that area of the bush far long than we had, we discovered that such bush events like that come and go, and can be decades between them. It all depends on various factors of heat and rain combinations.
One year (and only one year) we experienced a wonderful mass migration of millions of butterflies around us and above us for days.
Another year, a bush along our driveway suddenly flowered profusely and gave me hay-fever…and I 'never' get hay-fever and we had never known that plant to ever flower before! This year we had a big beautiful flower on our Yucca plant - which we have never seen before.
These were all 'unusual' incidents, and I might have even been tempted to call that fluffy caterpillar event as 'unprecedented'…as it was certainly in my life! But my life is rather short in the scheme of things.
This year however, brought another surprise.
Many years ago we had some spider lillies flower in our garden. But we had almost given up ever seeing them flower again, but this year after about 13 years…we didn't just have a few flowers, we had a massive bloom!
This year the climate has been quite peculiar…in the sense that the hot dry September/October we normally get was not as hot and dry as normal. We had fewer hot days and more early rain (it was wonderful to have our tanks fill up so early in the season). It was all very unusual. But now February and March have been hotter and dryer instead of the usual milder and wetter. It might have seemed a little different for us…but it was obviously exactly what the spider lillies needed for an abundant floral display.
It gave us greater opportunity to praise the Creator as we looked at them more closely and noticed how delicately and finely balanced they are. Photos just don't seem to do them justice. The 6 stunningly long thin equally spaced white petals, and the 'matching' 6 stamens hanging precariously on the end of such fine stems….just seemed to motivate a 'wow' of worship to their Creator… and my Creator. The ornate way in which the flower forms and then begins to 'open' to form such a beautiful pointed tear-drop shape, or like the edges of a multi-faceted diamond, is also stunning.
It's spotless whiteness is also exquisite, and certainly gives greater meaning to the word 'lily-white'!
How a person can take the time to ponder the beauty of creation and think it all came about by evolutionary chance, I continue to find hard to comprehend…except that sin and the Devil blind people's eyes.
The whiteness of the flower, also just reminds me again of the Easter message - how the blood of our Saviour washes us 'whiter than snow'. Well we don't get snow here, but this flower comes pretty close I think to what purity of whiteness means! This is a message of hope and confidence in the midst of a world saturated with fear.
This Easter may you rejoice in the confidence that the Creator holds the whole world in His hands, and furthermore sent His only Son so that we could have our hearts cleansed whiter than snow granting us the sure hope of eternal glory. And till then we can have the joy of our eyes being 'unblinded' to the glimpses of the glory of God in creation all around us. As we see His wondrous works and praise Him, we get to be part of all creation giving Him glory as He created it …and us…to do.
dd
The flower truly is delicate but so beautiful. We certainly worship an amazingly creative God who gives us such beauty.
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