ALL OUR MOMENTS

I love fresh flowers in my home. Our garden on the southern tip of Africa provides me with ample pickings. It is a seasonally planned garden, so whether there are sunny days or add-a-log-to-the-fire weather, there is always plenty to cut for the vase. Somehow, no matter how my day is going, a vase of fresh flowers never fails to bring me joy.

Over years of cutting and arranging stems, I have learnt to use a gentle hand. When I cut the stem just so, at an angle, when I am careful with the water temperature, and when I take note of where and how to place the delicate petals, they in turn are care-full toward me, rewarding me with longer lasting blooms.

This past month of January, while prayerfully listening and observing, I found the word carefully rolling around in my heart. Not a fearful “be careful,” but rather, as I do with cut flowers, a sense of treating the moments ahead with care.

In a world that seems rather harsh right now, a careful approach feels appropriate to me. Some gentle hands may be what is needed. How can I be careful to allow the Holy Spirit into a moment? Where does the temperature need to be cooled or warmed? How do I tread carefully in the space where God has placed me?

Carefully. To care, fully, for a moment, a person, a place.

I wonder what it could look like if those of us who are Christ-followers looked at all our moments and chose to be more careful with them. What if we slowed down to discern them more fully then placed them in the vase of our life a little more intentionally. What if we prudently cut some of the stems of our moments back, giving us and our families a little more drinking space. What if we looked with eyes that are more careful to see God’s love in the early morning moments when the day is fresh or the busy moments in the messy middle or the quiet moments just before we drift to sleep. What if we touched all these moments just a little softer, a little kinder, a little slower.

Maybe the invitation Jesus places before us is to not hurry past our days, in constant search of something else. Perhaps to take care of each moment, is the something else.

Jesus entered ordinary moments and revealed the kingdom there. In kitchens and boats, in crowded rooms and quiet gardens. He saw what others overlooked. He paused when the world rushed. He treated people not as interruptions, but as gifts.

And so, this year, I ask that God will grace me - and you - with carefully.

That we might learn to live as those who have been carefully loved and therefore choose to care fully in return. For it is often in the most ordinary moments that Christ is most present among us.

May we think on these things!