A sign? No I didn't ask for one. I just simply prayed a simple prayer. And the answer "came"!
With the weekend here I knew my flower garden needed some attention but boy my back was not looking forward to the task.
It would have been so easy to just put it off. But a sign showed up on my den floor and I knew it was time to go to work.
Let me explain.
Friday evening after work, my husband Mike was showing me all the things he hoped to accomplish on Saturday in our yard.
His mind was on trimming overgrown bushes.
As I stood in front of our flower garden in the front of our home, all I saw was massive pine straw with dry, dead leaves and weeds mixed in. I knew the gardner needed to get to work. I just happen to be the gardner, but my back was saying, "No, don't do that"!
And my husband was saying, just leave it like it is.
He didn't see the need to remove the dead dried leaves and weeds and old pine straw.
We agreed to disagree on that one.
Saturday morning came and I was in my most favorite place..having my "quiet time" with the Lord. Mike was in the kitchen making his wonderful smoked tuna dip. I heard him say from the kitchen, "Where did this glove come from?"
Of course I had no idea what he was talking about, so he brought the glove to me and told me it was laying on the floor next to the cats food. I just laughed and knew it was an answer to my prayer that I had prayed a few minutes earlier.
My prayer was, "Lord, do I need to work in the flower garden today"?
I had my answer! And I even had a glove to protect my hand.
Let me explain where this glove came from though.
A few weeks ago, Mike and our wonderful neighbor Tom took on a project to lift the cover on our boat so that water would drain off of it and not collect on the boat cover. It included PVC pipe and putting their brains to work.
They were having a problem keeping one of the PVC structures in place and Tom suggested they needed something to keep it from slipping. Mike took a look in his work shop and found one of my garden gloves that had rubber on one side of the glove.
He brought it out to Tom so proudly and they put their plan in place. It seemed to be the ticket and they both were satisfied with the solution.
Did I mention that a couple of our cats, Layla and Jack love to visit the boat and go "undercover"? Well they do and sometimes we see Layla sound a sleep while "undercover". We even joked about naming the boat, "Layla's Yacht".
Back to the glove.
Not many days after the men folk came up with the glove solution, I went to do some work in the yard and needed my gloves. Of course when I went to get them, I only found one. I thought that to be very strange and asked my husband if he knew anything about it and to my surprise, I got to hear the "glove solution" story.
Well, somehow I knew that I might need extra gloves this year for yard work, so I had purchased a three pack deal when I last bought gloves.
All the gloves looked the same, so I just went and brought out a brand new pair. I might mention that I didn't store them in his work shop anymore but in the car garage in a plastic container. No more disappearing gloves, right?
So on with the story...
I knew God was saying, yep, you need to work in the front flower garden today. So when I finally got started, I went to Mike's shop to retrieve the lonely glove whose partner had been taken from it for a great reason. Right?
Well apparently one of the cats...I am thinking Jack, because he loves
to carry things around and he loves when we work in the yard, brought it off the boat and into the house.
Yep, there was my "sign", that I hadn't even asked for. But by now Mike knew it was a sign as well, that I needed to get rid of those weeds, old straw and dried up leaves.
Okay, so why tell this long glove story?
Gloves have to be put on in order to protect or help us with whatever we need them for...gardening, golf, baseball, and even beauty pageants.
Earlier in my "favorite chair time", a Face Book friend (Pam Nevins) had posted a picture of a beautiful lapel pin that had the word love on it.
She related the following scripture to her new lapel pin. She said she made the lapel pin as a reminder (sign) to put on love.
Colossians 3:14
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
I commented to Pam that I would love to have one of her love pins to put on to remind me to put on love.
Okay, so how does the glove thing and this lapel pin relate?
I had to get up from my comfy "favorite chair time" and put the glove on that my kitty so obediently brought off the boat.
And we as Christians have to get out of our comfortable place of just loving when it is easy.
We have to put on love everyday. God is love and when we put love on everyday, we are putting God on and wearing love (God) in a way that others see Him and not us.
Let me share the few verses in Colossians 3 that came before verse 14:
Colossians 3:12-13
Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
What a loving God to move the mind of a kitty to bring a g"love" for me to put on, and to use it as a sign to say, Yes to my prayer, of "should I"?
What a loving God to provide a friend to post a beautiful lapel pin (a sign) to inspire us all to put on love.
But should we love the hard to love and the unlovable too?
Oh Yes, God is saying, put on love! Not just for those who are easy to love but for the hard to love as well. Put on compassion and patience. Bear with each other.
Ugh! That sounds like hard work!
What about my flower garden?
Well...I put on my gloves and went to work. I accomplished a lot but still have more to do. I am thankful that the weeds, old dried leaves and pine straw are on the road in garbage bags to be hauled away soon.
What about my heart? Well I had to do some work there too. I found some roots of bitterness that had to be pulled up and put on the road too. I finished it off with putting on compassion, patience and love to bind them all together.
What about you? Does your heart need some work? Are there some roots of bitterness towards someone that you are still letting live in your heart?
Ephesians 4:31-32
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
So just as I put on my gloves and got rid of some old ugly stuff and some weeds and roots out of my flower garden, so I had to do in my heart.
The way that we "get rid" of anger and bitterness in our hearts is through confession to God (agreeing with God that we are angry) and then asking him to take
it away and put love in our hearts instead.
Let's pray!
Father in Heaven,
Thank you for the help you give to us to get us headed in the direction that we need to go. We all need beautiful loving hearts, not mean angry hearts that hurt others and destroy relationships. Help us all to put on love each day through prayer. Father we ask that you remove the bitterness and anger that we have let grow and cause trouble in our relationships. We want our hearts to be beautiful and to bloom with all the virtues you have told us to wear. Cleanse our hearts of the anger, resentment, bitterness, and malice that may have been in our hearts for years or just since a very few minutes ago. We ask you to fill our hearts with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control instead. Thank you that love covers a multitude of sins.
Thank you that the work of love that Jesus Christ did on the cross covers our sins. We will walk in love today and not dwell in the anger and resentment of the past. Thank you Father for Jesus and Jesus thank you for the cross. By faith we put on love Let everything we say and do look like you (love).
In your name we pray, Amen
