God Bless the Ants

Their bright pink heads bowing to the ground, peonies always shout the arrival of summer to me. I have a large swath down the center of my backyard, and as soon as the snow melts I'm checking for shoots. As excited as I get, my boys love them more because they snap off the large round buds and throw them at each other. Hmm.

At least until they noticed the ants crawling all over them, which, admittedly, have always freaked me out, too. I was telling a friend about my peonies, and how the ants always bother me. She told me that the ants need to eat the green covering of the bud off so the flower can bloom. Who knew?

God shouts at me through His creation, and this was no exception.

When God planned us, as individuals, He had something beautiful in mind. But like the peonies, we would never reach our full potential without the ants. Without the challenges that eat away at our protective covering, we would never bloom into the creation He intended us to be. The difficult situations that we go through, those times that we call out to Him for relief and rescue, are the ants. And once our tough shell has been destroyed, we are free to bloom with all the frangrance and beauty He intended for us. It doesn't come easy, or naturally, to embrace the hard times, but consider them a gift from God, who alone knows your potential.

Let us offer our lives to God, an aroma pleasing to Him.