Faith like Tulips

In the summer of 2012 my friend and I went to the Cincinnati Zoo to purchase some of the tulips that they sell at the end of the Tunes and Blooms spring season.  This is an awesome event that they have at the Zoo everything Thursday in April. The Zoo comes to life with these beautiful tulips from all around the world and it is quite the backdrop to the already awesome animal exhibits. I remember we sat there for over an hour waiting for the sales to begin. My friend had her eye on the biggest bunch of tulips in crates that they had for sale that day. They were a beautiful red color and everyone there would look at them as they walked by. We had the edge, we were the first ones there. Finally, the sales began and she purchased the coveted bunch of tulips. As we were walking through the Zoo to the exit carrying the double sized crate, I remember feeling as if we were walking with our prize. As if we were proud hunters that were walking out with the 15 point buck of the day. I had promised her that I would help her to plant them sometime that week. The only problem was that neither of knew how to plant tulips.

The day came when it was time for me to make good on my promise and we were in her flower bed planting away. Besides some tips that we grabbed from various Internet sites ( most of which seemed to contradict the information that we had read the site before), we just started planting them with wreckless abandon. We must have planted over 100 bulbs. I prayed over the garden and dedicated it to God. I remember when I finished wondering will they come up? What will they look like? You really cannot see the full picture until flowers bloom. Yeah, you have a picture in your head, but until you see it with your eyes, it's all just your imagination. I remember thinking man, this is going to take forever before we see what we have created together!

The other day my friend mentioned the tulips to me and I was thinking  of how planting those tulips and waiting for them to bloom is a lot like a picture of  Faith. It's something that is in the ground and you cannot really see the changes that are taking place beneath the surface of the ground, but you wait in expectation that in the spring, you will see the show of pure beauty that God will put on for you as the tulips start to take the stage. We planted the seeds knowing that , God will make them grow. He gave nature it's capability to know what to do and when to do it. However if my friend and I didn't truly believe that they grow, we would not have purchased them, or took the time to plant them in her garden. We would have just said, oh well we don't know if they will grow, so why plant?

Faith is a lot like this in the way that we cannot see the things that we hope for and we usually have to wait for some period of time before we see whatever it is that we are anticipating. In the Bible there are quotes from Jesus.. "Your Faith has healed you"  and  "Let it be done for you according to your Faith !".. It's clear to me that  our Faith in whatever we are wishing for, is the main active factor that God is able to work with in order to have it come to fruition.  Faith is will based and necessary for any miracle. God can do anything that He wants and is not limited in any way however; I feel  it is a our Faith that moves Him to co-create with us. It's no fun when all parties are not participating in anything in life. It's not all about work on our part but mostly about belief. When James said that, "Faith without works is dead", I really feel he meant more of the stepping out that happens when a heart truly believes. Do your actions match what your mouth is saying? If we told everyone that we believed we could make a garden of tulips that would come up in the Spring but then when someone gave us the opportunity to do this, said ehhh we are really not sure that will happen, that is a lack of Faith in what we have professed. True in this scenario we did have to physically work with some elbow grease, ( it was not easy planting all of those bulbs)..  Sometimes it can be as simple as the action of speaking after we have asked for something or profess to believe in something in our lives. If I ask God to use me to change the world, but then make comments such as " I am just one simple person, how could God ever use me"?  The action of your mouth speaking disbelief is showing what is truly in your heart on the matter. "Let it be done for you according to your Faith !"..  Individual reality is nothing more than individual perception of reality. Two people can  attend same event and each individual person can walk away from the event with a different opinion of what happened while they were there than the other person will have. What happened while they were there is their individual perception of what happened and for that moment in time was their individual reality. What is real to us? What do we see with our eyes?

When I take pictures, sometimes I focus the lens on one subject and I take several different shots from several different angles. It amazes me every time how different the same thing can appear when I change my position around the same subject. It creates a new frame. We truly can do this in life with our circumstances. Move, change your position ( re-frame). Choose to see it differently. It's true that all sides of that subject remained the same but it was I that had to move around,  to see the different angles that made a completely different picture and it  gave me a totally new perspective of that same subject. We will see whatever we choose to see with the lens of our eyes.

Matthew 13:58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith..