Just for His pleasure...

 

 

Jesus said we must become like a little child to enter into His kingdom. But what does that mean, exactly? 

 

A small girl blowing dandelion seeds might answer that question for us.   First to bloom in springtime, this plant  makes its presence known by the display of golden-yellow blossoms to announce its arrival. Yet during this brief period of glory, the axiom "a thing of beauty is a joy forever"  will not apply, for that lovely color will soon disappate and evolve into something akin to our white hairs showing up when we reach age forty. Our love affair with the dandelion will vanish quickly, replaced with summertime warfare.

 

One of the most resilient of all plants, the dandelion rules-- despite all our digging, the toxic weed killers and repeated mowings we give it, it grows in the poorest of soil and needs no transplanting, no seeding, fertilizing or care of any kind.  It will blossom and then turn its petals into thousands of weightless umbrella-seeds to be blown about by the wind (or our kids) and scattered into all the places we dug and sprayed and mowed thinking we eradicated them this year, only to double our trouble for the next.  A truly perpetual, indestructible perennial if there ever was one!

 

A dandelion is both admired by some and hated by even more.  Just like you and I. We should all remind ourselves that when we ponder life's ups and downs, that there are stages in our existence that brought us times when we might have savored the admirations of others. But it will not be long before we lose our youthful beauty and people may no longer see us the same way.  We changed.  And in order to perpetuate, we need to produce seeds. Sometimes those seeds invade where they are not wanted and we can become like the dandelion--considered no longer a flower, but a weed. 

 

So what can we learn from this?

 

Like all the things God created, we have to learn the lessons He might teach us from them, for they were not made without reasons. For when He had finished His six days of creation, He called everything good! Even a bedbug!!  Corrie Ten Boom and her sister were in a Nazi death camp and were put into a building full of them.  At first they recoiled, but it didn't take long for them to thank God for them--because of them, the guards did not want to go to that particular building, which made it possible for Corrie and Bessie to have bible lessons with the other women.

 

The greatest lesson I suppose, is from Revelation 4:11:

"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created."

That small child blowing away the dandelion seeds understands that!  She will run about looking for more and more of them, having the time of her life! A simple explaination, yet there is much more to it than that.  God, who created it all, is  intricately involved, not just with what OUR eyes see, but with what we DON'T see! For the unseen things also bring Him pleasure!

 

 

 

Salmon now coming up our rivers from the ocean are beautiful to behold. Fishermen are excited and by the thousands hit the banks to catch their limits, prized for their taste. Yet in just a few short months, those salmon will begin to change: the males grow a funny looking snout and lose their bright colors.  If they make it back to their particular stream, the females will lay their eggs, the males will fertilize them, then they both die and their rotting remains feed the bears and hungry birds.

 

But God is watching it all: for the incredible forces that He placed inside them have taken them out of Alaska into the salty ocean and after years of growing then the instincts He placed inside guide them back to the very place where they were born. We humans see them as food...but God is getting great joy and pleasure as he observes again this annual migration. The Lord doesn't have to eat that salmon to enjoy seeing His handiwork at work in its brief life.  Nor does He have to pick a handful of dandelions and blow its seeds into the air to have fun with that lowly plant.  We do, but not Him. Just as He admired His planet called earth on that sixth day of creation and called it GOOD, this is the way God looks at everything!  All things were created for His pleasure! 

 

If a lowly dandelion and a stinking, rotting fish have priceless worth to God, how much more do you and I have worth to God? We are made, not only in His image...but for His pleasure! Truly, He never leaves us nor forsakes us.  Nothing makes Him happier than to see you and I fulfilling the plan He intended for us even before we were born. 

 

You and I are not a dandelion nor a fish...we are much more than we could ever imagine!  He placed within each of us His divine plan, but unlike the dandelion and the salmon, we possess the free will to choose to accept or reject it.  Yet He watches over that plan, even when we don't think He's around or has walked away from us when we stumbled, He is still there--working every moment with the aim of getting pleasure for Himself when He sees His finest creation becoming one with Him.

 

From an article written about this subject:

"God rejoices in the works of creation because they point us beyond themselves to God himself.

God means for us to be stunned and awed by his work of creation. But not for its own sake. He means for us always to look at his creation and say: If the work of his hands is so full of wisdom and power and grandeur and majesty and beauty, what must this God be like in himself!!

These are but the backside of his glory seen through a glass darkly. What will it be to see the Creator himself! Not his works! Not even a billion galaxies will satisfy the human soul. God and God alone is the soul's end. When our eyes become as His, then we too can look at things from His perspective and see not only our worth--but the worth of every living thing on the face of the earth.

In the end it will not be the seas or the mountains or the canyons or the clouds or the great galaxies that fill our hearts to breaking with wonder and fill our mouths with eternal praise. It will be God himself. "

---The Pleasures of God by John Piper

 

Mary E. Adams

www.maryeadams.com