Though often buffeted by turmoil in the world and turmoil in our lives we are challenged by today’s readings to remain faithful, to not give up on making a difference in the world simply because the task seems so overwhelming; or because we think, in view of a coming catastrophe that nothing we do matters anyway. Thus St. Paul chewed out the little group of Christians in Thessalonica who had decided that in view of the imminent end of the world, they might just as well quit work! Great idea—lay around and gossip and cause trouble, waiting for Christ to return! No way! said Paul. We—individually and as a community of faith--are here to make the world a better place by being what God has created us to be—whether the world ends tomorrow or lasts another billion years.
Problem is—as the skit showed us--we are often frozen in fear. We just do not even begin to experiment with arts or crafts or leadership or trying a new sport or a new job or whatever simply because we are frozen in fear of being criticized, or laughed at—or, and this is a big these days, because we are afraid of conflict. To some of us it seems like the world when others don’t agree with us! We want to have our approval ratings already in place before we ever do anything! In popular shorthand, we call this, trying to be perfect. It freezes us into inaction, so that we fail to be the wonderful gift the world God has created us to be!
And so, to cover our anxiety and our sin we engage in the trying game: I’ll try to change. I’ll try to call more often. I’ll try to get over to help you with that project. I’ll try to get our budget straighten out. I’ll try dieting again. I’ll try to quit drinking. I’ll try to work fewer hours. I’ll try to spend more time with the family. I’ll try to be more faithful in coming to church. I’ll try to do this, I’ll try to do that. But it’s all a smokescreen. We’ll really don’t plan (sincerely) to do any of it because if we did mean it, we wouldn’t say, "I’ll try." We’d just do it.
A while ago I read an essay that made this point beautifully. It is the story of a mother and daughter and visit to a daffodil garden the daughter kept insisting that mother just had to see. On a Tuesday morning, the mother having finally agree to the trip through the cold dawn and the fog, they pair drove into the foothills where, unknown to her, the mother was about have her life changed by what she later called, "The Daffodil Principle." She narrates:
"… we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand-lettered sign that read, ‘Daffodil Garden.’ We got out of the car and I followed Carolyn down the path. When we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight. It looked as though someone had taken a vat of gold and poured it down the mountain peak and slopes.
"The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns—in great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron and butter yellow. Each different-colored variety was planted as a group so that it swirled and flowered like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers. "But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. "It’s just one woman, " Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That’s her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.
"On the patio we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and very little brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."
"There it was. The Daffodil principle. For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than 40 years before, had begun—one bulb—at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. This woman had forever changed the world in which she lived, just planting one bulb at a time, year after year. She had created something of indescribable magnificence, beauty and inspiration.
"The Daffodil principle…learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time—often just one baby step at a time—and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we, too, will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.
"It makes me sad in way, " I admitted to my daughter. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal 30 or 40 years ago and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at time’ through all those years. Just think what I might have been able to achieve!" My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said. [From the Ask Dr. Hort column, San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2001.]
Exactly! Let us not wiggle out of things saying, "Well, I guess I’ll try." No, let us do the thing God has gifted us to do. Well, what is that? I cannot tell you. You already know, or if you don’t your mission is to find out, like those New Yorker guys in the movie, City Slickers, so confused and anxious about their lives, on a search for meaning and reality a dude ranch out west. One day, tired of their whining and their anxious seeking an answer for their anxious lives, the tough old trail boss Curly holds up one finger and says, "The secret to life is this." And smart mouthed city slicker says, "What, your finger?" "No," says Curly. "The secret to life is just one thing." "Well, what is that one thing," the slickers want to know. "That’s what you got to find out," Curly says, and he turns his horse and rides away.
We’re not all going to be a Mother Teresa or a Billy Graham. We’re not called to save the world—that’s Christ’s work--but we each have something to do that God has given to do, something that will give us joy and the world a blessing. That’s why Howard Thurman said: "Do not ask what the world needs. Ask yourself: What is it that makes me come alive and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Trust our loving God and bloom where you are planted--even if it seems like the world will end tomorrow. Amen.