This morning I accidentally knocked my orchid from the cloakroom windowsill. It fell to the floor where its china pot smashed spilling earth everywhere. Dismayed, I had to shut the door on the mess, (I am recovering from a fractured shoulder and would have to wait for help to clear it up), but I hoped desperately that the orchid had survived.
This made me think how, sometimes in a moment, our lives can fall and shatter. Like a rare and beautiful plant, we have been created in love by our Father God who planned from the beginning, that as his beloved children we would be channels of his love and beauty. Yet life hits us, we make mistakes and become wounded. Some of us even believe we are only fit to be swept up and discarded or we may shut the door on our true identity like I shut the door on that broken plant pot.
But the good news is that the power of what Jesus did to forgive and restore us, covers our past, our present and our future. No regret or shame is too big for his love to transform. His love heals our hearts and minds and makes us totally clean, whatever we’ve done.
I am moved by how Jesus reinstated Peter in John 21:9-17. He lovingly tended to him by cooking breakfast. He then asked Peter three times if he truly loved him, thus tenderly undoing the destructive power of Peter’s three denials, a painful but powerful healing journey, at the end of which Peter was chosen to be one who would tend and nurture others who were precious to Jesus.
How beautiful is God’s healing love and forgiving grace. I too have experienced this and even though my life was once as shattered as that plant pot, Jesus has both forgiven and healed me. I don’t need to hide anymore, and he doesn't want you to hide either. Like that orchid, you too are rare and chosen to be a unique and beautiful channel of Jesus’ love into our broken world.
Nb...A friend popped over later, on the day I broke the plant pot. She cleared up the mess and rescued the orchid which had survived the fall and was intact. It’s now reinstated on the windowsill in a new pot and will bloom again. God makes all things new and beautiful. He is our living hope.
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