God built incredible beauty and variety into every facet of creation. He was not content to create the world in black and white or drab grays. He invested it with the colors of the rainbow and a million shapes, sizes, and textures. When you examine the universe, you have to conclude with Annie Dillard, “The Creator loves pizzazz.”
That’s one reason I enjoy growing flowers. Every single one gives expression to the incredible handiwork of God. They come in thousands of varieties and colors, and I enjoy them all. But I must confess that, of all the flowers that I grow, my favorites are the mandevilla and the alamanda. The mandevilla produces a vine that climbs upward during the summer and produces big, pink blossoms. And, the alamanda is even more showy. It sends up tall woody growth that produces even larger yellow blooms.
The only problem with the mandevilla and the alamanda is that they focus their attention on growing tall and produce little growth around the base. Last summer I decided to do something about that. I planted a purple jew plant at the base of the mandevilla and a batfaced cuphea at the base of the alamanda. At the end of the growing season, I put the flowers into the greenhouse, and then brought them out this spring. The jew and the cuphea survived and thrived in the greenhouse. This summer they have filled in all the vacant spaces in the pots of mandevilla and alamanda. There’s just one major problem—the mandevilla and alamanda have been overwhelmed. The ground cover plants at their base are consuming so many nutrients and their roots are so aggressive that I have not had a single mandevilla or alamanda bloom this summer. What I intended to be small and supportive plants have crowded out the things that I value the most.
That often happens in life. Things that should be small and subordinate have a way of growing and overwhelming things of great importance. Have you ever taken a look at typical family garages? They were built for the express purpose of providing shelter for our automobiles, but often other things have taken over. The end result is that our garages are often filled with junk while cars that are worth thousands of dollars sit unprotected in the driveway.
Jesus said that was often the way it was in the lives of the religious people of His day. They had lost a sense of priority and proportion. In their zeal to observe small laws, they overlooked major ones. He said they would “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.” They sometimes did it in their giving. They would carefully count out the seeds of their herb plants and tithe a tenth of those, but then they would omit the “weightier matters of the law” like justice, mercy, and faith (Matt. 23:23-24). Those people are not the last generation to make such errors. May God help us focus on the priorities in our lives!
