Consider the lilies; how they grow. They neither toil, nor spin.

When teaching us about worry, the Lord directs us to the lilies. I think this is such a beautiful image of a simple faith on God constant care in our lives. The world tells us to work hard, try hard and push harder, but the Lord simply says, "Consider the lilies..." and teaches a valuable lesson on faith through them. I confess that I cannot describe my life as a lily, and at times, I may have to describe it as I-75 freeway instead.

So... consider the lilies. When I was a little girl, there was a tiny little patch of orange tiger lilies in my front lawn. Every year, they would pop up, happy as ever, nestled in the roots of a huge maple tree. When I heard the song, "He is the Lily of the Valley," I thought they must be talking about the little valley between the roots of the maple where my lilies grew. In my simple child-like understanding of that song, I loved to imagine Jesus as being like one of my bright little lilies. Every time I saw them as I was playing outside, I would start singing "He's the Lily of the Valley," until I ran out of the words and started humming it while I played. Because of this, I've always loved lilies. I had lilies at my wedding, stargazers, actually, because I loved the deep burgundy they hid at the base of the petals. I always wondered if the deep burgundy got deeper after it disappeared into the stem of the flower. They were the first flowers that my husband, (then my boyfriend,) gave me. He didn't actually give me real flowers, he bought me a beautiful painting of a single stargazer.

And to think... Jesus is the Lily of the Valley. In this article, the writer considers the fact that He is the source and the subject of all beauty. When we consider the delicate orange of the tiger lily, or the deep burgundy of the startgazer, we must look back to the One who spoke such vibrancy into existence. And in considering Him, the loud intrusive details of our lives, the "toiling and spinning", fades away in the presence of such radiance contained in One. 

Joel found that article for me, and also these links to an artist's project called The Four Holy Gospels, a project where he is using modern art to illustrate the four Gospels in celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the KJV. I admit, I was fascinated. And though I am not an art connoisseur, I was stunned by the beauty of his (yes, modern) art. Here is a link to actually flip through some of the pages of it. Let me know what you think.

Photo credit to Makoto Fujimura