Weeds or Flowers? (Friday Devotional)

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

- 1 John 3:1

When we’re out for a walk or playing in the front yard, sometimes one of my kids will cry out with excitement and rush over to the grass, bending down to grab something. When they turn back to me, I’ll see what they found: a bright yellow dandelion. Sometimes, they’ll even pick a “bouquet” of dandelions to give to their mom, fully expecting her to put them in a vase the same way she would with tulips or roses.

To adults, this is the kind of childish behavior that makes us smile condescendingly at the sweet, naïve children who don’t know any better. Dandelions, after all, aren’t flowers—they’re weeds. They’re not something to be treasured, they’re something to be mowed down. You don’t admire dandelions, you exterminate them.

But then I got to thinking, and I looked at it from my kids’ point of view. Dandelions have a stem and petals, just like a flower. They grow out of the ground like a flower. They have a sweet smell like a flower. And most importantly, they have the same bright sunny color as a daisy or a sunflower; they add another shade of color to an otherwise monochromatic green lawn. Are my kids so wrong to see a flower where I see only a weed?

When we look at other people, we often see only the bad, keying in quickly on their failures and flaws, criticizing and judging. We’re quick to dismiss people as lost causes, unworthy of our time and energy. In dark moments, you may even see yourself through that lens, finding more to disparage than to praise.

But when you see someone broken beyond repair, God sees someone He created in His own perfect, holy image. Where you see a failure, God sees an opportunity for redemption. What you see as unworthy, God gave his Son to save.

Beauty can be found in the most unlikely, broken places—and the most unlikely, broken people. For where we see only weeds, God sees flowers.