LIFE RIGHT NOW â—½ YOU
Before the sun rises, the trucks begin to arrive. Each one filled with baskets and boxes of that week’s harvest. Some bring freshly picked vegetables. Others have honey jars collected from a bee farm or fragrant flowers grown, cut, and bundled into beautiful bouquets. The vendors work in quiet rhythm setting up tables and tents, ready to greet each customer as they wander through the outdoor market.
Some of us get to frequent farmer’s markets throughout the year (lucky!), but here in the Midwest we wait for the ground to thaw under the warm sunshine before the market is ready to open for the summer season. It’s always such a treat to abandon the grocery aisle and support our local producers for the items on our shopping list! Like eggs. We’re always on the hunt for farm-fresh, pasture-raised, pecking and scratching whenever-they-want-to, happy (obviously – because farm-living is chicken paradise) eggs. And aren’t they the most gorgeous farmer’s market eggs you ever did see?
Eggs. Each one selected for THAT particular carton. All shapes and sizes. Not one exactly like the other. Despite their outward beauty we have no way of knowing what’s happening on the inside (if you’ve ever cracked open a yucky egg, you know what I mean). Each one ready to be transformed into something new. Scrambled? Hard boiled? Baked into a cake? Oh, the possibilities…
​
But, be careful with them. Right now, they are so very delicate that one careless move, however unintentional, could crush that beautiful shell. If that egg falls to the floor, we’ll never know the amazingness that could have been for that egg. And each one of those eggs is meant to become something more.
​
Thinking about eggs reminds me of the kids I taught over the years. Each one selected for my particular classroom. Not one exactly like the other. Some eager to be there…some would rather be anywhere else. And we have no way of knowing the hurt and trauma they may be carrying with them on the inside. The yucky stuff hidden beneath the surface. But it was my job to gather them all up, love them, teach them, and guide them. No matter what. So, I tried to be careful with them - sure to catch them if they start to fall. Because each one of those kids is meant to become something more.
​
Isn’t that also how God protects each of us? We can be fragile. Sometimes we fall. We bring a lifetime of hurt – damaged hearts, wounded souls. Occasionally we shatter into a million pieces. Like Humpty Dumpty, we long for a gentle hand to put us back together again. Psalm 46: 1-3 reminds us that gentle hand belongs to God, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”
​
Like delicate eggs in a carton and precious children in a classroom, we are fragile. Breakable. But as a teacher becomes a cushion for her students, God is our merciful safeguard. He’ll catch us when we fall. No matter what. And He knows exactly how amazing each one of us is meant to be.