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The Wildflower Principle
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, April 24, 2005
If you fall in love with the teachings of Jesus, you will
fall in love with His images. They are unforgettable. As a matter of fact, it
is probably the images that you remember more than you remember the text.
It is the incredible ability of Jesus to give us images we
just never forget and this morning I want to give you again an image from the
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6.
I’m going to read from Peterson’s paraphrase or his
translation of this. I will begin reading from verse 28 and even though the
words are going to be a little different, you can follow along in your text.
“Jesus says, instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and
look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever see color
and design quiet like it? The ten best dressed men and women in the country
look shabby alongside them. And if God gives attention to the appearance of
wildflowers, most of which are never even seen, don’t you think He’ll attend to
you, take pride in you, and do the best for you? What I’m trying to do here is
to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to
God’s giving.”
Jump now to verse 34…”give your entire attention to what
God is doing right now and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen
tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the
time comes.” This is the word of the Lord.
The key phrase is – the lilies of the field. Now these are
not lilies like the lilies that help us celebrate Easter. The word from the New
Testament is a word for wildflower. In that part of the world, the wildflowers
were what we would call anemones, poppies, and buttercups. In the scripture,
you have one of the great parables about a sower that went forth to sow. They
didn’t have mechanized what farmers would call drills that is, planters. And so
with a kind of a very loosely fit bag around his shoulder, the sower would
distribute the seed and it would be what? Wheat, maybe, oat, maybe, barley,
maybe. I can guarantee you it wasn’t wildflowers. Now we do sow wildflowers in
this day and time. The government does alongside of roadsides, but it is
interesting isn’t it, they don’t tend them; they put them out there, they grow.
In that day and time and this day and time, wildflowers are a God thing. They
are God planted, God grown, God planned. Which one of you has ever had anything
to do with the designing, cultivating, growing of a wildflower? When you see a
wildflower, Jesus says, this is a God seed. God planted it. God slowly but
surely is working on new possibilities and those possibilities, says Jesus, are
directly from God. Here are some things that He’s trying to get across it seems
to me when He says, please look at the wildflowers.
The first thing…Jesus is saying what I have already just
mentioned that this is a God thing. You had nothing to do with it. God’s the
cause. And you see, we do so much in our lives that is completely managed by us
and we wind up being ill-equipped for those times of life when we can’t do
anything. How many times I have been by the bedside of someone who is very ill
and in a few hours or days they will be going home to be with the Lord? I don’t
care how well that person’s life may have been managed up until now, it is now a
God thing. And only the Lord can walk that person through the valley of the
shadow to the other side, but now let’s take your life. When you come up
against something that you just really can’t manage, you can’t manipulate, you
can’t plan, you can’t bring to fruition, look at the wildflower and remember.
Remember that God can do things that you can’t do, you can’t manage, you can’t
administrate, you can’t plan, you can’t bring into blossom. Let God have a part
of your life that is God’s thing.
In California, you’re quite aware that there is Death
Valley. It is a stretch of barren desert below sea level and it’s between
mountain ranges. In that, they have discovered almost microscopic seeds and
those seeds are just waiting for a rain, which almost never happens, but when it
does, those microscopic seeds bring microscopic, or almost microscopic
wildflowers. Who sees them? Nobody. Nobody to speak of, except some people
who may be there examining the plants. No highways go through and tourists
don’t go to Death Valley; Yosemite, the beaches, the Redwoods, the major cities,
Death Valley? So why would God plant wildflowers that nobody can see and nobody
visits? Because it’s a God thing. God loves to create and He loves surprises.
If God can do that in Death Valley, don’t you think He’s comfortable moving in
to the desert places of our lives and planting some seeds that will blossom in
ways that we could never understand? You see, something incredible happens
anytime we surrender our lives to Christ. Surrender is the key. Surrender
opens the door. Surrender makes the soil of our hearts willing to receive and
then God begins to plant seeds in our lives in unlikely places like wildflowers
and we begin to change. We begin to blossom. It surprises even us. Oh the
weeds come and sometimes we pull them up and other times we treat them like
hothouse plants. And there are those who think that religion is about pulling
up the weeds for everybody else! No, no, no, no, no. You see, what we’re about
in the region of faith is tilling the soil to get ready for God’s wildflowers in
our lives.
Second, Jesus said, “Study the wildflowers. What’s really
happening is underground.” And that’s really, really, really true of the human
heart. What God is doing is usually hidden. You don’t see it, sometimes we
don’t even, but a lot of times we’re aware something is happening deep down that
nobody else is. You see, spiritual things are God’s underground achievement.
The human eye may not perceive it, but God’s knows what’s going on.
Recently, I took some time off to attend the 50th
anniversary of my University graduation class – the class of 1955. It was
really a wonderful two days, but there sure were a lot of old folks there! Of
particular interest to me, were the guys I played football with. When we
entered 1951, there were 15 of us – 15 freshmen on the football team. Some of
those guys were really good players. I was able and they kept me around and I
am very grateful because it’s the only way I could have gotten through, but some
of those guys, they were outstanding. Ten of us graduated – of the 15, ten
graduated. At the reunion, five of us were left - kind of a lump in the throat
– athletes so strong, so vital, so commanding, now gone. The brevity of life
stared us in the face. If you think you’re going to live forever you’re not,
get ready! What did interest me was what has happened to some of those guys
that I was with. When we were playing ball together, I never dreamed some of my
teammates had a spiritual bone, muscle, or cartilage in their bodies. They
never attended church; they never did anything that would indicate God was
working in their lives. They seemed completely disinterested. Now 50 years
later, I’m standing there listening to them talk to one another, not to me, but
talk to one another about what is going on in their lives and do you know that
God has planted His seeds and some of them are now teachers in the church,
deacons, deacons! Singers…amazing! One is going on a mission trip to Africa.
He and I, we entered at the same time, played very close to the same position,
if he ever went to church one time in four years, I never knew about it. The
closet thing he ever got to being in church was when we graduated because they
had graduation in the church building! His wife came up to me, now his wife;
his wife was really a social headliner when she was in the University. She came
up to me and she said, can you believe we’re going on a mission trip and I
wanted to say, I can’t believe that. Going on a mission trip to Africa with her
church? And you know what she said, you know, ever since we’ve been in the
church, God’s been doing something to us and then she looked at me and she said,
you know I’m not a missionary and I started to say, Amen! But she said, we
really feel like God wants us to do this. See, it’s the wildflower principle.
It may take 50 years, but God’s doing His thing!
Third, Jesus said, “Hey, study the wildflowers. Embrace
what they’re trying to tell you – that perfection is not in the vocabulary of
wildflowers.” Now others are – they have flower shows and wise and wonderful
people grade them. Roses, etc… wildflowers… have you ever seen anybody grade
wildflowers? Have they ever had a show of wildflowers? What Jesus says is,
don’t worry about perfection – just be a wildflower and bloom. Bloom where
you’re planted.
Margaret Gunford, an Episcopalian priest, spiritual life
director, lives in New York City. She’s written a book called ‘Holy Listening;’
a wonderful title. In it, she tells of finishing a long day filled with intense
conversations; listening to lots of pain. When the day was over she was really
wrung out. She went to catch the subway for the commute home wanting the
anonymity of a quiet, corner seat. She found one, was about to do some
paperwork and then was looking forward to putting her head back on the seat,
listening to the click of the wheels on the rail when coming to sit next to her
was a shabby, disheveled, not very clean woman. As the woman sat down she
looked over and saw the clerical collar and Margaret thought, uh-oh! I’m in for
it and sure enough, as soon as the woman had given her a greeting, how are you
sister? The story of her life began to gush out. She talked about her
background, her family, the dysfunctional parts of her life, of the addiction
and of the hope that she had for the rehabilitation center where she was going;
a new beginning she said. Margaret made the appropriate responses out of her
tiredness. She had been at it a long time. The years behind rewarded her well.
She listened, she responded, out of her fatigued position. When the woman stood
up to leave, Margaret said to herself, now she’s going to ask me for money and
she went through that little inner conversation that we happen to do when we’re
in a situation like that; do I give money, do I not give money? If I give it,
am I confirming bad habits? If I don’t give it, am I not responding to people
God loves? And how much should I give or how do I explain if I don’t give? And
she was going through all of that in her head when the woman stood up, turned,
and then paused a minute. As she turned back, she leaned over to Margaret and
as she said, thank you sister, God brought you into my life today and she placed
in her hand a subway token, which was probably the only thing of value that she
had. She turned back, was lost in the tugs and the pulls of subway people.
Margaret sat there humbled. The woman on the subway was thirsty not for drugs,
not for alcohol, but for living water like the woman at the well in John 4. She
was thirsty for God and Margaret thought to herself, I have never responded out
of a more tired, exhausted position and yet God took what I had and the Lord was
here and it was beautiful. It’s the wildflower principle. You don’t have to do
it perfectly, just do it! Bloom where you’re planted.
And there’s another word…Jesus makes very clear…wildflowers
are to teach us that you don’t have to worry about the future. Wildflowers
don’t last long – a day, two days, three days, maybe a week and they’re gone and
as Jesus says, they’re good for nothing except to be used for fuel, but while
they’re there…oh my! What beauty they bring! What evidence of God’s love and
care and creativity. A very busy man overcome by his responsibilities, perhaps
out of desperation called the wisest man he had ever met. Over the phone he
explained his situation. He went on and on and on and on about his schedule,
his responsibilities, what was expected of him. Finally, finally he came to a
close and he said, can you help me? There was a pause on the other end of the
line and then the man said, I have learned a very important lesson. It comes
straight from Jesus. If you will be very ruthless, ruthless about the anxiety
that you have about the future, just don’t put up with it and give yourself
completely to the joys and the duties of everyday and the man who called had his
pencil ready. He wrote it down and then he said, I got it, now what’s next?
Expecting a list, you see, of how to reverse the downward spiral. There was a
pause on the other end of the line and finally the man said, for you, there is
nothing else. You just didn’t hear me. You must deal ruthlessly with your
tendency to worry about what might be instead of giving yourself to what is and
then he quoted from Matthew 6:34. I will quote as it was given to you early in
the Peterson translation, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right
now and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. Give
yourself to the moment and to the day. Tomorrow will have challenges of its
own.”
It is the wildflower principle. If you walked in here this
morning a bundle of worry and anxiety let me tell you something. The Lord Jesus
says, it is today that the kingdom happens. The wildflower principle is – bloom
today and let God worry about tomorrow. God’s wildflower principle is working
in all of our hearts. Maybe the question is whether we’ll even notice, whether
we’ll even look, and whether we’ll even say yes. Jesus says, notice the
wildflowers – how God takes care of them.
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