Posted July 2, 2009

Lilies Strutting Their Stuff

When you experience summer in the South - when the grass gets so brittle it's crunchy, and to be outside means your clothes won't stay dry longer than a minute and you're nowhere near a body of water except your own - you might think your garden is lost. You know that a lot of your flowers have "gone the other way" as my Grandmother Mary Kate used to say. However, when you don't think there's anything else to salvage, the lilies start strutting their stuff.

Every time I look at them, I think about what others have said about lilies. King Solomon, in his Song of Songs 2:1-2 says: "I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens." Have you ever wondered which lily held his gaze?

And then another reference in the Bible is when Jesus admonishes not to worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. In the twelfth chapter of Luke he says, "Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes...Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith!"

Sometimes, when you think you've "gone the other way," or it certainly looks like you're headed there with the economy in limbo, when you've had just about all you can juggle, can't even pen a word much less a paragraph, lean down and take a close look at a lily strutting her stuff, O you of little faith! And remember Jesus's words, "How much more will He clothe you."

Keep the faith. Like the Tiger Lily, you'll look stunning wearing polka dots!