A Lesson from the Pasture

            If you haven’t been able to tell, God gives me a lot of analogies from nature because He knows how to communicate with me best. So I was driving home from work one day and had an epiphany while looking out in the pastures.

Look at a pasture. What do you see? Weeds, grass and flowers? Or do you see lessons? In a pasture there’s usually flowers mixed in with whatever is purposely growing there. The beautiful, bright colors amidst all the green of the pasture.

The pastures are full of weeds and flowers, right? The weeds are like temptations and sin. They’re everywhere you look and where one grows, more and more grow. However, the flowers grow amidst the weeds and they represent the beauty that can come from the grace of God. He has the ability and desire to transform what once was ugly into something that is beautiful. We give into our temptations and we sin, it’s ugly and when we give in once, it’s hard to stop. But God in His grace has the ability and desire to transform our sinful hearts into hearts that desire glorify obey Him. We stand out among the weeds because God is making us into beautiful flowers. The sin is there, but it’s important to remember the grace of God that transforms us. You will also notice that there is rarely just one flower out in a pasture. A reminder to you and to me is that we need never walk this life alone. We are not meant to. All the other flowers are people just like you and I, imperfect people living in the grace and mercy of God.

There are many lessons to take away from the pasture. One of them is that there is always something beautiful happening. We can easily get caught up in what the world is trying to tell us and teach us, and we forget to look up and see the beauty that God creates everyday. Look up. Look out. See what God is doing. Live in the grace of God. You are not and never will be alone. The weeds of sin can overtake us if we let it. We can also let disappointment of our decisions overtake us. But y’all, we serve an awesome, merciful and gracious God who wants us to turn to Him instead of beating ourselves up over our decisions. He wants to make us into beautiful wildflowers that stand out amidst a world that is entangles in the weeds. Allow Him to transform you. It’s hard and it takes work, but it is so worth it. Remember also, that wildflowers have seeds that they spread, do that as well. Plant seeds to enable others turn into beautiful wildflowers out in the pasture.