Miracle Grow

I read an excellent Max Lucado excerpt called The Choice at Creation. Lucado paints a beautiful picture of Creation. He travels through the first days of Creation as God created nature. The trees, the flowers, the mountains, the valleys, and the skies were created to love and obey God. They had no other choice. As I read this passage, it quickly appeared to me why I love being in nature so much. I seek out nature when I need a “reset”…It’s the only place I know to go that I will undoubtedly find, hear, and see God. Yes, God is omnipresent and is currently right where we are. However, we often get caught up in distractions or the routines of our day that assist us in missing His presence. But in nature, I am sure to find Him. Of course! Nature obeys and loves God without question. His beauty is found in the vastness of the trees, in the span of the ocean, in the star speckled sky, and within every sunrise and sunset. They exhibit His glory without question and sing His praises all the day long. But when God created man. He breathed into it life and a soul. A soul that was given a seed. And He called that seed “choice”. Lucado then described the gift of choice as, “Spontaneous love. Voluntary devotion. Chosen tenderness…” Lucado put it best that “…to remove the choice is to remove the love.” He gave humanity the option to feel love. To experience it. To choose it. What a truly profound, loving, and selfless thing for our Creator to do. Selfless? Yes. Because that means we have the option to NOT choose to love Him. Imagine how painful that experience could be. It can be likened to that of a parent who has a wayward child. Imagine a father knowing that you love Him, yet choosing to do things against His will. And that He loves you so much that He chooses to send His only son to die the most horrific death in all of history. Imagine that pain. If you can begin to understand that pain, then you can understand the amount of love that it must have taken for Him to do such a thing. What a paradox.

God is a paradox. While that may seem offensive in a way to say, it is an absolute truth. His love and actions go against everything we think ought to be. God chooses to become a man to demonstrate His power and love? Don’t let the irony of that get lost on you. Our idea of rulers, gods, leadership…is someone having power over you. Someone who controls or “runs” a particular thing. Not someone who gets on our level. Who chooses to experience the same heartache and temptations that we have without ever giving in. Can you imagine knowingly putting yourself into a situation where you will be tempted, tortured, accused, and knowing that you will never give in? Who humbles himself to walk in the trenches with us?
How about the fact that God chooses a fisherman…or a tax collector—not a religious leader—to follow him and be a messenger of His word? Or when He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and not a white horse. Or that time when He was wrongly accused and given the most brutal death in the history of humankind. He is God after all. He could have not only stopped it at any moment, but He also could have shown wrath upon His accusers and abusers. He was a carpenter by trade, a savior by divine purpose. He was born via natural birth, but conceived in a supernatural way. Ok, you get the point. The truth of the matter is that faith is the understanding that….we don’t understand everything. And why should we? What kind of God would He be if all of His ways and mysteriousness are revealed and known? If God can use a donkey, He can use you.
“Believing” itself is a paradox. Faith requires the unknown and unseen to exist. It’s a matter of what you choose to see, whether it is there or not. It’s a matter of how you choose to respond. It is a matter of who you choose to follow.
It’s a matter of… if the seed is buried or is in fact planted? Perspective.