My guess is that the dandelion is not a favourite plant, but I find it really hard to dig them up. I was on an “awareness walk” – one of those where you take time to look at where you are walking and try to find something of God in what is around you. I came across a dandelion tenaciously growing in a crack of the pavement. Resisting feet trampling it and weed killer killing it, it had survived. I was going through a testing time of wondering what God wanted of me, and this is what I wrote (with apologies to anyone who has seen it before):
My faith is like a dandelion, it grows and flourishes in the cracks and crevices of life,
taking root in the most unlikely of places.
My faith is firm and full of life, sunny, just as the flower of the dandelion is full of life and bright yellow.
But then, just when everything is comfortable and serene, something happens. It is as though the world that is so safe and secure becomes fragile, just like the clock on the dandelion, fragile and so delicate that the slightest movement will send the pieces flying away.
My faith from being securely rooted is disturbed. I find it hard to see God’s hand at work. I cry to Him, but cannot see what is happening and I become stripped of all I am, bereft, just as the stalk of the dandelion is stripped of its head. I forget that the stalk is still rooted in the ground being fed by the leaves, all I know is that my faith, which seemed so strong, is no longer.
It is then, when I am nothing that God in His infinite mercy comes and fills me, touching me with His love, His compassion, His strength, His life. It is then I realise the seeds that blew away and left me bare, have in fact rooted themselves deep within me, and the faith I thought had gone has become stronger because of the experience of being emptied and filled anew.
I don’t like the times when I feel so insecure, when it seems my faith is fickle. Yet I now know that through these times I am being brought back to God in a deeper relationship which helps me to grow, and I need the barren times in order to appreciate the harvest, otherwise I take God for granted.
So thank you God for the dandelions in our lives that help us to see You more clearly.
Reveal in us, Your glory, Lord, stir us in Your power.
Renew in us Your kingdom and develop in us Your faith.
Show in us, Your way and open us to Your love.
Strengthen us with Your hope and work in us Your miracles.
Revive us with resurrection energy.
And, please Lord, abide with us always in the good and difficult times.
Amen.
Prayer for the Week written by Denise Creed.
You can download this week’s prayer as a .pdf here
