My Friend the Crushed Flower
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing…” Isaiah 35:1-2
When the Lord brought back into my life a woman I had met years earlier and known back then only a short while, she was just like a crushed flower. Have you ever seen a crushed flower, trampled underfoot, beaten down by the storms of life, soaked by the rain, no longer sturdy, crestfallen, its petals lilting so low the breath of a baby would knock down its last vestiges, but with a beauty so untold, so unspoken, so unsung, so present, that you can’t help but see how lovely it once was or could be or would be if only it would rise up to its full potential as the pretty little flower God created in His most magnificent hands of love and majesty? My friend the crushed flower was so very much like this. And it was almost as though I could see with the eyes of my heart her blossomed, but oh so sadly how she was not. For she had been crushed underfoot in tragic part by the big brutish gale-force winds and fiery stormy sins of another, not to mention as all humans are beaten down by the suffering that inevitably comes with our own wrongful ways, our own sins sometimes oh yes in response to the sins of another and sometimes simply and sadly the consequence of our own human fleshly lustful selfish ungodly ways. Usually both.
I started speaking regularly to my friend the crushed flower, and realized only in retrospect God’s purpose in bringing us together was two-fold. First, He would use me to lead her back to His living waters, His Spirit, she had once known but become too weak and wary to partake of, and back to a deep commitment to His Word, helping her to become a genuine, sold-out not just believer, but follower of dear Jesus. Second, He would miraculously, magnificently bring her into such full and glorious bloom He would subsequently use her once revived, reinvigorated, resurrected, rejuvenated, so fully blossomed in His love, strength, and mercy, to lavish me and only He knows how many others with the love of the new petals He had so abundantly placed upon her that she would shower me and my ministry work with His love and Spirit.
Oh, what beauty God can bring from a once crushed flower who yields to His sovereign will, His amazing Word, and His life-giving, life-changing Spirit. Oh, to God be all glory!
Crushed by the world around? By others’ sins? By your own? By the darkness of this world? Will you surrender yourself into the arms of the Lord? To His Word? To His will? To His plan for your life? Through faith in Christ? To devotedness to Him? Oh, yield to the Lord, oh yield!