Make Room for Flowers

 Don’t you love seeing the beautiful variety of flowers in people’s yards, and wildflowers popping up everywhere? The landscape is bursting with color!

A vase full of rocks has no room for flowers. A heart full of rocks has no room for peace.

I like rocks, and love finding ones with fun shapes. But rocks don’t belong in a vase, and I try to keep them out of my heart.  What ‘rocks’ do we sometimes feel in our hearts? Things like hatred, greed, resentment, envy, and pride.

I’ll share with you a situation when God, in His immense goodness, removed from my heart the rock of pride. I had had an encounter with someone who offended me -- something we’ve all experienced. I felt hurt, and the problem grew not so much from their actions to me as from my recounting the incident over and over in my mind and nursing my bruised ego. As time went on, though, I realized that focusing on myself was dragging me down. I wanted God’s peace; I wanted to acknowledge the hurt, learn from it, and let it go. I knew that, since God had forgiven me (countless times) for offending others, I had to forgive those who offended me, and I couldn’t do this without His help. As all these thoughts swirled in my mind, I came upon this verse:

“All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.”—Ephesians 4:31-32

Boy, did that hit home. So I sat down and prayed: first, for the grace to let go of this grudge, and then for His blessings on the other person. Finally, I asked God to take away the rock in my heart and clear the way for His peace. I pictured myself picking up the rock, lifting it up to God and saying, “Here! Take this!”   

And God, in His infinite grace, freed me! The tightness in my chest loosened and the bitter feelings left me. I still had the intellectual knowledge of what had transpired, but the rock of pride was gone and the flower of peace took its place. You must understand that this was God’s doing, not mine! I then offered prayers of thanksgiving and asked Him for the strength to resist this sin in the future. Be assured that He can and will remove the rocks in our hearts over and over again if we trust in His goodness!

“Praise be to God, 

who has not rejected my prayer

  or withheld his love from me!”--Psalm 66:20

 

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