TIM E HOLDER

(When I first saw the name of this flower out of corner of my eye, I thought it said dysfunctional gravy. But, I digress.) The diphylleia grayi is a beautiful, delicate white flower that grows in the colder, moist, wooded mountain regions of Japan and China. It can grow up to about 1 1/2 feet high and maybe a yard wide. The plant is a perennial and blooms in mid-spring to early summer in shady conditions. The small cluster of pearly white flowers grow out of and are supported by large, umbrella shaped leaves. Nothing particularly unique to look at. It is, of course, a pretty flower. But here in the states, we have flora and flowers every bit as beautiful as the diphylleia grayi.

The reason I like this particular plant, at least in pictures, is because it is a great representation to me of how, although sometimes nice to look at, we are intrinsically delicate creatures, made tough and hardy and resilient only because we are supported by something…someone much stronger and foundational than the tiny stems we sometimes perch ourselves up on. We find ourselves living in a culture that believes it thrives best on self-sufficiency and selfishness. Trying valiantly to appear extremely sophisticated which somehow makes them believe they are self-aware. To keep this facade up, they must wear a stark, whitewashed countenance where everything appears pristine and looks pure and unadulterated. Not only have I seen that person in our culture, I have seen that person in churches. I have not only seen that person in churches, I have seen that person in my mirror.

 

What I have found over the course of my almost 6 decades is that it is just too hard to keep up a pretense of goodness. Even Paul said it. Romans 7 says, “It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.”

 

When the rain comes, I have a tendency to want to hide from it and stay dry. When in fact, the storm itself is what will ultimately make me healthier, more aware…aware of where my strength and my resilience really comes from. If my true desire is to shine, to reflect the many glorious facets of Jesus, if that crystal prism of my existence is to be used to benefit others by showing the glory of my Heavenly Father, I have to be willing to trust others with my weaknesses.

 

I know November is coming up soon. One of my favorite months in this class. We hear testimonies all month. I’m always overwhelmed leaving those classes when someone shares how the mercy and grace and love of Jesus has transformed a life from a plain old flower to a defined, crystal, unique, one-of-a-kind, living, breathing example of a faith that is fearfully and wonderfully made. That is never easy. It comes, many times at great cost and through many storms. But the rain will certainly come. And we have to choose how we will respond to it.

 

Momma Dawg is a flight risk. I always have to take her out on her leash or she WILL run. If it’s late at night, no matter the weather, if she gets out on her own, I have to leave the sliding door open a crack and turn off all the lights, so she can, after she has romped through the woods for a couple of hours, baying at the moon and waking all the neighbors, sneak back in the house, and jump up on the couch, thinking she has really gotten away with something. The first couple of times she got away with this, I learned she likes potato chips. I make a Hansel and Gretel trail from the sidewalk, all the way up the deck till it ends inside the house. Momma Dawg will cautiously eat the chips until she gets inside the house and I jump out of the corner and slam the sliding glass door closed behind her.

 

One winter night, she just wasn’t playing fair. She wouldn’t follow the trail. It was about midnight. It was about 40 degrees. I was freezing. There was frost on the ground. I had my bag of chips, Momma Dawg was just out of reach. I could see the cast of her silhouette in the safety light outside. I sat down in the grass and called her name. “Momma…Momma!” She just sat there. If I got up and tried to walk slowly toward her, she would run to the edge of the woods. I put a few chips on the ground and she just looked at them. I thought maybe she felt threatened by my being taller than her. I thought if I got down lower than her, she wouldn’t feel intimidated and would come over and get the chips. So, I laid down in the damp grass, put some chips at arms length, and, because it was cold, sort of curled up into a ball. I started calling for her. “Momma…Momma!!!” And somewhere in the middle of this, I thought, “If the neighbors are looking outside right now, they are watching me, at midnight, laying in my front yard, in the fetal position, calling out pathetically for my mother, with a bag of potato chips.” So, I gathered the molecule of dignity I had left, got up and went inside the house. I left the door open a bit so all the heat could leave the house and laid down on the couch until I heard Momma Dawg jump up on the couch and look at me, totally cocky…as if she had proven some kind of doggy point.

 

But, here was what I learned. Momma Dawg could run away for awhile. She could try to be on her own. But, in the final analysis, she knew where she was loved and safe. And that’s where she could always return. It’s good to know where we are safe. It’s good to sense who we can be safe with. It’s vital that we have a network of forever family we know are walking this journey with us. The ones who call us to honesty and give us freedom to not be okay. It’s important that we know who will walk with us in the rain.

 

One day I was, again, walking Momma Dawg on her leash outside. Now, Momma lived the first couple of years of her life out in the woods. She was one of 4 beagle puppies someone dropped off on my road. She wasn’t touched by a human the first 2 years of her life. But, she knew how to survive. When we went outside this one day, and got a ways from the house, it started to rain. Momma Dawg, by habit, knowing by habit how to hide, would run from the safety of one tree to the next, all the way. I was furious. I was getting soaked. It was miserable. I tried to stand under the same bush or tree branch she was under, but I was still wiping drops off my glasses. I was getting really irritated. Then I suddenly stopped. Why was I getting mad? What was it about this that made me miserable? When I was a kid, I LIVED for times like this. I would BEG Mom to let me go out and play in the rain. It was all in the attitude. It wasn’t about the rain. It had nothing to do with my being wet. I was too sophisticated. I slowed my steps down. I was inconvenienced. I picked my wet dog up and held her close. My clothes were drenched. I walked over to a ditch and stomped in the puddles. I couldn’t see through my glasses because they were fogged over. I had to take them off and notice Momma Dawg looking at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. But I took a deep breath, held my head back and let the rain splash against my cheeks. And I thanked God for bringing nourishment to the plants and trees…and to me.

 

It’s like that when I open up and trust other people. When I’m transparent with my struggles and my dreams and my weaknesses and my hopes. Hosea 6:3 says, “Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; His going out is sure as the dawn; He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” I believe it is in our nature as human beings to desire that others know and love us for the wonderfully made, unique and precious individuals God made us to be. Our greatest desire is to know and be known. J.I. Packer said in his book, Knowing God, “What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind.

 

All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me, and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore, when His care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see (and am I glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

We all want to be known. We all want to be unique, railing against a culture that would dictate otherwise. We all desire to be loved for our particular brand of God-made beauty. Like I said earlier. There’s nothing unique or different about the diphylleia grayi. It’s just a simple white flower, supported by a strong foundation of the thick leaves that protect it. Unless it rains. Unless the storms come. Then what happens? It becomes a lustrous masterpiece made by the greatest of all Glass cutters. It is unique in all the world. Breathtaking. No more beautiful than it was before…maybe. Still the same flower. But, beautiful in a different way. The rain comes, the flower chooses transparency, and it becomes a prism of glass, shining the clarity, the holy, radiant light of the One Who is perfect in His artistry. It is magnificent and marvelous because it has nothing left to hide.