Dandelion Clocks
Psalm 104
He makes the wind his messengers
What a masterpiece of propagation a dandelion is. A globe of gossamer, so light and transparent, that the wind transforms it into a tour de force for planting new seeds. Imagine if we as Christians were like that. How many seeds could we have sown in our lifetime? Whom have you told about God's saving love? How many ways have you demonstrated God's love to the folk who have crossed your path? In that ethereal ball, imagine there were a hundred seeds, and that they, like a hundred moments, were events in your life. Times when you comforted someone who was ill, spoke words of kindness where others did not, gave money in secret, believed the best of someone, encouraged, when it would have been easier to give up on them.
In this unusually dry spring weather, I went to the park, and on this day, it was like walking through a veil of white. I had never seen so many dandelion seeds filling the air as on that breezy day. People waved their arms as though coming upon a biblical pestilence of flies, batting these tiny seed fairies from their faces, lest they swallow any.
Such a scene, struck a thought about perseverance; these vulnerable seeds, so flimsy, powered at random by the wind, which elevates them at just the right moment, have such great power and effectiveness in sowing for the future. As I looked on the ground, I saw bare stalks, millions of them, no wonder there was a fog of seeds. It was almost like when migrating birds flock and then suddenly take flight, it felt like, this was the day nominated for dandelions to take over the green spaces.
1Corinthians 2:4
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
It is when the supernatural power of the Holy spirit impacts on a person's life that the seeds of the kingdom are sown. We are like the wind, the vehicle for the power of God.
1 Corinthians 3:16
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit lives in you?
It is in our own relationships these seeds are planted. If the seed is planted in willing soil, another life will be transformed and saved by the Grace of God. By acts of kindness, going out of our usual comfort zone to help someone, demonstrating His love, leading by example or having such empathy with another person, that we may be Christ's own heart to them; weeping then consoling; listening and afterwards discerning God's will; praying and lifting their brokenness to God's love.
1 Corinthians 3:6
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
Paul is explaining here about different encounters, between believers and non-believers that can affect the spiritual life of a person. From a willingness to receive the Word, a new Christian finds a new desire grows within them. They begin to hear how God is making a calling on their life; it then allows each believer to develop their own relationship with God.
Think about those known to you, who will you be meeting with today? Could you pray for them before you meet? And ask God for the wisdom to make an impact however large or small, in the events of that meeting. If in a hundred such encounters, a hundred seeds were sown, and multiply that by members of your fellowship, then we might add a double zero to the amount of lives changed to fullness in the grace of God. Amen to that! What is needed is a little courage and forethought; then we might experience a day like the one I witnessed in the park - a day like that in spiritual terms would surely be a great revival!
