water

After a brief illness, my mother died on January 30, 2012. Not only was she my mother, she was also my best friend. I was in shock. One day she was recovering; the next, she was gone.

For two weeks, I grieved heavily and could not focus on anything else. But life got in the way. My son was to be married on February 18, so there was little time. My husband and I were giving the wedding and I was blessed to have the help of a wedding planner. She had taken on more and more of the wedding tasks during my mother's illness and after her death, but there was still the urgent need for me to shift from deep grief to joyous anticipation.

With only four days remaining before the wedding, I went into my prayer closet. Pouring my heart out to God, I told Him how desperately I needed to feel joy about the wedding. Immediately, His still small voice replied, Life is about the living.

His meaning swept over me. My mother was in heaven, having a blast singing praise songs with the angels. There was nothing else I could do for her. Memories are still to be cherished, but that life was finished. However, my son was getting married (a miracle in itself). He had gotten his life turned around and the future was before him. Life is about the living.

Instantly, I felt the weight of my grief lifting from my heart, slowly replaced by joy as I found myself looking forward to my son's wedding and beyond. Some grief still lingered but it was manageable. No longer burdened with tears of pain, I could now go through the wedding with smiles of joy.

A couple of weeks later, God revealed to me some deeper meaning to His Life is about the living. Not only do we humans grieve the death of loved ones, we also grieve about other dead things.

We grieve about our past sinful lives before we were saved. God has forgiven us, but we won't forgive ourselves. We grieve over a past hurt, whether it occurred thirty years ago or just last month. We don't forgive the one who hurt us. And we grieve about the if onlys of our past. We beat ourselves up about all the what-might-have-beens if only we had done something differently.

One day my husband and I were sitting on our front porch. As we admired the beautiful blooming azaleas, he mentioned we had a dead one. There it sat, all dried up and brown. Then God gave me a wonderful illustration of what He had been revealing to me -- No one waters a dead azalea...or weeds around it...or fertilizes it. Instead, the focus is on living azaleas. They are the ones to be cared for.

So why on earth do we spend time watering the dead things of our past when there are millions of living people who need encouragement and to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior?

The Apostle Paul long ago addressed this very thing. "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13b-14)

No one ever saw Paul watering a dead azalea. He knew. "Life is about the living." 

-susan paradise