We have a camellia bush that hasn’t bloomed for five years.
This year it made up for it with white outweighing green.
I’ve been mesmerized by the unfolding patterns.
It made me wonder.
Would I rather see myself as a camellia or an onion?
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There’s a popular illustration that we are like onions, unaware of how bad we are. As we peel back the layers, it exposes the infinite depths of our sin nature.
I’ve lived the life of an over-eager onion peeler for many years.
But what if the more important question is how God sees us?
What if God views us more as camellias, unfolding at his command, in his time, in his beauty? And at the end, when the center is revealed, there is a life-giving seed, Jesus and His Spirit, instead of a pungent mess of onion skins?
What if even my repentance is God’s process of opening me up to myself and him? Do I have the faith to wait for God to unfold my life in his timing, trusting it will reveal his fragrant beauty? Or would I rather take control and chop, peel and weep through my layers and radiate a different kind of aroma?
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.For we are the aroma of Christ to God…
2 Cor 2:14-15
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In Christ, God sees us as camellias.
Even when we have to wait a long time to bloom
and it seems we “serve” no practical purpose.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. . .They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.
Isaiah 35:1-2