Rest there, trust Him and take flowers (the answer to a hellish question)
The sun is up. A breeze blows playful over fields and yards. Birds sing all glorious as I drive down roads ribboned with sunbeams, two schoolboys tucked in just behind.
It’s the last day of school.
“Mom, can you take us to Starbucks?” one of them’d asked in an adolescent bass. “Since it’s our last day and all?” I’d looked at him, all blue-eyed and freckled, then glanced at his brother. Who, too, is blue eyed with a gap in his grin. Ahh, how did we come to this day so soon?
My heart had wrenched a bit. Our kindergarten days are done; chapter written. The adolescent moves on; chapter starting. Oh, it’s good to mark moments, lay stones, build altars. It’s good to celebrate these milestones. And so I’d said ‘yes.’
At the store now, before getting our drinks, I trot them over to Florals. “Let’s get flowers for your teacher!” I enthuse to The Cricket. He points. “That one there. She loves yellow.”
It’s on the way, now, to school that he says it. “What if the kids laugh at me?”
Oh. He’s worried about how it will look, carrying flowers to the teacher. He doesn’t want the others to laugh. And so I say this: “What you’re doing is kind and good. It’s loving, what you’re doing for the teachers. What the other kids think? It doesn’t matter. It’s their problem.”
“It’s their problem?” he says from the back.
“Yes,” I say. “It is. When you do what is right, what’s loving and kind, it’s their problem.”
“If 100 people laugh, it’s their problem?” He’s checking. “Yes,” I say. “It is.”
And one more time. “If 100 million people laugh, it’s their problem?” Now I’m laughing.
“Yes,” I answer. “Even 100 million.”
This is what I’m thinking today: my little boy only said out loud what I am tempted to think. “What will they think of me?” And here’s what I’m learning to say: “It doesn’t matter.”
That hellish question (yes, hellish) comes straight from the devil. It does, and we know it. When we walk in obedience, doing what He commands, then what anyone says, it doesn’t matter.
What He tells us to do, we should do it. What He tells us to say, we should say it. Where He tells us to go, we should go there. Then leave the whole ending with Him.
If we walk faithful, listen closely, trod justly and love rightly, then He, the Lord Christ, has our backs. After all, it’s His opinion, His will, His favor that counts, and He’ll bless. Oh, friends, He will bless.
As I heard an old saint say once upon another day, “God takes responsibility for the consequences of our obedience.” So rest there. Trust Him, and take flowers.
Warmly,
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P.S. – Here’s Little with his teacher beloved, Mrs. Davies. Who does, indeed, love yellow and loved his flowers, too.
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