"Consider the Lilies"
“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”
Let us, for a moment, consider the lilies. I’m thinking particularly of the ones that begin to bloom in the late spring and early summer by the roads of East Tennessee. The beautiful, bursting, day lilies that remind me that this is a good place to be. There is something mysterious in the way they open and close throughout their days under the sun, or even when they’ve been displaced from the ground and put in an empty Dr. Enuf bottle on the living room table. Their beauty mesmerizes me; their knowledge of when to open, speaking volumes with their intricate and varied shades of orange, and when to go into solitude and await the call of the daylight shames me. How do they know to come up again that time every year? How are they, in their nakedness before the world, so delightfully attired? So often we speak out of turn, and we have to try so hard to maintain an image. Why are we not like the lilies? Consider the lilies.
Considering the beauty of created things can help us to consider the beauty of their Creator. Surely, we may be tempted to forget God in looking upon the material world. But doing so would simply show us to be disoriented, unable to relate ourselves to the world in holiness. Thomas Merton, in reflecting on the way the saints have related themselves to the world, says, “It was because the saints were absorbed in God that they were truly capable of seeing and appreciating created things and it was because they loved Him alone that they alone loved everybody” (23). Further, Merton writes, “The saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good, while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy, or else they don’t bother about the question one way or another because they are only interested in themselves” (24).
Here we begin to see the problem. Self-interest leads to disinterest in the creation all around us, from the trees, to the rivers, to the ozone layer, to the soil, and yes, the children of God throughout the world. Not considering lilies just might lead to not considering the stranger and the supposed friend. It is disinterest in the good things God has created, and misguided attention to self that leads to division among people and their environment; it leads even to the great evil of an institution such as War. Seeing only the need to acquire and wield power over others, the masses rally behind prideful, yet “sound-sounding” clichés marinated in hatred and greed. Out of an unwillingness to have faith that God can be trusted to provide for their needs and a blindness to the goodness of all that God has made, people pit themselves against one another in war rooms, battlefields, the streets, even in churches, dormitories, classrooms, and households, all the while thinking there is no other way. But there is another way. There is the Way.
Let us remember, then, that what God has created is good. Fifth century mystic and bishop, St. Diadochos of Photiki, has some helpful words for us today as we struggle to see the goodness around us: "Evil does not exist by nature, nor is any man naturally evil, for God made nothing that was not good. When in the desire of his heart someone conceives and gives form to what in reality has no existence, then what he desires begins to exist. We should therefore turn our attention away from the inclination to evil and concentrate it on the remembrance of God; for good, which exists by nature, is more powerful than our inclination to evil. The one has existence while the other has not, except when we give it existence through our actions." All that God has made is good.
Consider the lilies, good in their existence as lilies, as they should be. Consider the human being: very good, made in the image of God, according to God’s likeness. Sadly, human history can sometimes seem to be a chronicle of the forgetting of that image, but we are here to remember. And we have mundane, yet good and beautiful things to help us remember. We have gathered to sing songs of angels and poets, saints and sinners. The Word of God has been read over us, bidding us to listen, training us to hear creation weep. We gather here to shed off the things that hinder us, the stuff beyond the clothing of a lily: vanity, fear, pride, fashion, doubt, bitterness. We have gathered here to see simple bread and fruit of the vine transformed into a holy meal that transforms us. In this place of worship, we are faced with profound simplicity: birds neither reap nor sow, yet they eat; grass does nothing, but no designer-clad runway model could outshine the beauty of a simple flower that grows in a field. This is the vision of a new creation, a good creation.
Worship, prayer, the Eucharist: these all draw us beyond ourselves, shaping us into people able to concentrate on the remembrance of God, to love God fully, and in turn love all. In love, and for the Kingdom of God, we strive. As we endeavor, let us consider the lilies, or whatever our favorite flower or tree or animal may be. Let us consider our neighbor, our brothers and sisters. Let us consider and contemplate the goodness of God seen in all that is.
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