Every year, around Mother’s Day, my children buy me four ferns to hang between the posts on my front porch. This year, not long after I hung my ferns on the porch, I was petrified to see two little bulging eyes staring back at me from the bottom overflow section of my hanging pots. Tree frogs!
When I first pulled back the fern fronds and saw those eyes, I was terrified until I realized they weren’t monsters living in the bottom of my pots, just harmless little tree frogs. But now, watering my ferns became a problem. I was afraid I would drown them by filling the overflow pot with water, or I would run them out of their “homes” and divide their little family. They also have a tendency to “sing” incessantly at night, and their noisy croaking was NOT one of my favorite songs. To me, the tiny, harmless little beasts had become pests … or so I thought.
One day soon after I discovered the frogs, I found little pieces of chewed up leaves all over the cement under each fern, and tiny grasshoppers were eating my ferns for breakfast. Now I had another dilemma. If I sprayed the grasshoppers with insecticide, it would kill all of the beneficial insects like the praying mantis who eat mosquitoes and flies, and, I wasn’t sure what it would do to the tree frogs living in the ferns. I swept up the dead pieces of fern and fretted over what to do. Then … the next morning when I went outside, dreading what I would find, I was pleasantly surprised. There were no more dead leaves on the cement. The frogs took care of the problem for me by eating up the grasshoppers.
That life-lesson made me think. I’ve seen people shun or ignore others because they make them uncomfortable, or because their good qualities are not immediately apparent? We are ALL God’s workmanship, and He created each one of us unique, and for a reason. Just like the frogs have a purpose here on earth, God gave each of us a perfect purpose too. I want to strive to honor, serve, and love others just because God loves them and created them for His glory.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:10
You’re right Carrie. I keep reminding myself of that fact, that “all things work together for good to them that love the Lord.” Even when we can’t see how God is working things out. Thanks for the comment. 🙂
Okay, since I don’t have to listen to them at night, those frogs are ADORABLE! But I love the lesson you learned from this and I find I’ve been thinking along a similar line — that everything has a purpose that God knew about ahead of time, and even if that purpose doesn’t seem good, God is still working it for good.