I spent this last weekend at home in Spokane with two of my greatest friends. We all needed to get away to a place we could call home. I love my house. I live out in the middle of the wheat fields … green, rolling wheat fields. Only, this time of year, they’re not entirely green. Half of them are green and the other half are just brown. Only a few things are true in life. First is that Jesus loves you. Second is that Cassy Collins ALWAYS smells good. Third is that sharks are monkeys. And fourth is that there are very few things that compare to green rolling wheat fields with the sunset on the horizon, reaching its crescendo of brilliance. The fifth thing to remember in life is that there aren’t many things uglier than brown, cracking, muddy wheat fields, with leftover clumps of straw strewn across them. This last weekend, I saw a lot of both. As I was driving home, I noticed one wheat field in particular. There was a valley, with the remnants of what used to be a creek running through it. This valley was surrounded by beautiful, green, rolling wheat fields. The wheat was just getting long enough that the wind could barely move it. And the brilliant green was offset by the canvas of blue-grey it was painted on. Beautiful. …And then there was the dirt.
I was very unimpressed by the clumpy cracked dirt in the small forgotten valley. And I was wondering why it couldn’t be as pretty as the luscious green grass above it….why the owner of the farm, the creator of the field, couldn’t have planted something there to make it beautiful. I wondered why the creek had dried up. I wondered what it was all for. For some odd reason, I identified with that field. I wondered why at times I feel like my creek is dried up, or like I have brown clumps of straw scattered around …and why I’m not being used to grow something. I decided that the field was ugly. I decided that the field was pointless. I decided that I was ugly …I decided that I was pointless.
And then God jumped into my thoughts. He stopped me. He asked me why I thought it was ugly. He told me to take a second look at the field, and I did. This time, I saw a little boy, crouched in the mud down by the creek. He was making things in the mud. He was forming things with his hands, and he was laughing out of sheer joy. And He looked up and told me, “Don’t call it ugly, because it’s beautiful if I’m in it. Sacha, it’s beautiful if I’m in it. It’s my job to take mud and make life. I don’t care what you think about yourself, or about things around you. All you have to do is let me jump into the middle of whatever you think is ugly and let me mold it…because it’s beautiful if I’m in it.”
I had an amazing weekend, wheat fields included. If you, the person reading this column, have never taken the Palouse Highway between Walla Walla and Spokane in the late afternoon, you need to…because it’s beautiful. If you, the person reading this column, have never let God jump into your mud and handed him your inadequacy, then you need to…because it’s beautiful. I’ve seen a lot of ugly things. We all have. A lot of things down on this earth can get ugly. That’s why it’s so important to ask God to be in everything, because He promises that He’ll be in anything, He’ll recreate anything, and He’ll love you with everything. When I look at myself, I’m ugly. I’m a muddy, cracked up, creek-less field. And that can get depressing…until God bends down into the mud and whispers to me. He says, “It’s beautiful because I’m in it.”
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