For a while I have been thinking about poppies in fields of wheat. I don’t know exactly why the idea has settled in my thoughts, trying to make it’s home there, but the image seems to be calling me to remember something true and important.
The children and I have been reading about the Silk Road and famous people who have travelled this network. The Silk Road was not a single, particular pathway but rather many routes connecting the East and West. In spite of the perilous nature of such a journey, trade and the exchange of ideas inspired travel along these lines. We were reading about Xuanzang’s trek across the Taklamakan desert and began to feel relief every time he reached an oasis. Literal springs of life in a dry and barren land. How on earth does water pool in an area that is otherwise surrounded by burning sands and cloudless skies? We read that glaciers dripping in mountains far away flow through underground channels and settle in spots in the middle of no where so that weary travellers might live when they thought they were going to die. How often do we miss the melted ice waiting just for us off the beaten track, because we have decided it is too risky and a human being can only carry so much water?
We have come away once again – into the mountains where the air is thin. Drive this way and tell me that you do not notice the transparent curtain between the natural and the divine. Feisty cone-shaped bushes with purple brush-like blooms have sprung up in the unlikeliest places; thriving in compact soil and seeming to flourish from the very rocks themselves. Unattended, free-range and fully alive. Just the other day my glorious Maidenhair fern at home in a pot collapsed, dehydrated, because I had thought someone else had watered it and so I didn’t. Within two days, the delicate leaves that have thrilled me no end, had shrivelled up, stalks leaning over defeated. My pride and joy that usually gets continuous attention failed to thrive; like a lion in a cage would if the zoo keeper forgot to throw in the meat. Yet out here on the mountain side, the purple blooms sing their days away come rain or shine, leaves dancing with the slightest breath of wind. Robust, rooted in the very spot that the original seeds fell, thankful for nightly dew, daily mist and unexpected rain fall.
Could it be that the more careful we are about our lives, contained and controlled and managing the conditions carefully, the more effort it takes to live? And doesn’t our dependence on our systems and routines somehow weaken us? If we don’t get what we are accustomed to, we fall apart. How do we live in such a way that we expect nothing and yet find ourselves receiving all that we need whilst we simply worry about putting down roots and exploding into the most vibrant version of ourselves, not phased at all by the unexpected or interruptions? Fully alive during feast or famine, knowing that every season comes to pass.
Perhaps the poppies in a wheat field catch my attention because right there in commercial farming, right there where food is being grown and money is being made, pretty flowers with cups full of seeds exist without even being intentionally planted. They sway for fun whilst the wheat is coerced into growing just so, for maximum yield. A short while ago I felt that the Lord was wanting more flowers planted and growing in Zimbabwe. On a national level we are so concerned about agriculture and yet perhaps it is not the wheat in the fields that will settle our hearts but the flowers; reminding us not to worry about our lives. Poppies living like the mountainside bushes living like the men who crossed deserts for reasons that moved their hearts.
Colossians 2 v 6 & 7: So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Matthew 6 v 25 – 30: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour 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, will He not much more clothe you – you of little faith?
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