The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.                                                     Psalm 147:11

Remember those old, yucky, long-dead flowers a few months ago? (See The Gardener’s Way) I pruned with fear and prayed I wasn’t killing them. I realized that it was God’s way to cut out the old and useless, pruning away that which was no longer of value.

From the death that was put away came this awe striking beauty of my flower beds.

The day I pruned them, they grew. They became stronger and more healthy. The pruning itself had value and added value. Today we see the second phase of the pruning, the new life that is possible because it was done.

There is mercy and then there is grace.

You see, mercy is taking the old, dead, and ugly away. Grace is having the breathtaking replace it.

He takes away the sorrow AND replaces it with joy. He ends the tears AND ushers in the dancing.

To get to the breathtaking part, we must first be willing to lay down the ugly, we have to concede to its being pruned, lifted, cut out, and burned. The sick truth is that sin and Satan and this world have so jaded our vision that we look upon the hideous and somehow believe that nothing could be more beautiful. Why would we trade this lovely disaster for a promise of some other show of greatness? Because our eyes are broken, we accepted the blinders, and true beauty is beyond our comprehension. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t real and that it isn’t all true.

So often we look at the trash heaps of our lives and refuse to lay them down because we find them too valuable–or just too familiar–to possibly have a worthy replacement. We can’t imagine any greater reality (or maybe we can’t believe we could be deserving of it).

There is something infinitely more amazing available. But you can’t get there if you’re weighted down with yesterday’s garbage.

There are tell-tale signs of the greatness beyond; that hint that something is broken, that taste of death and incompleteness, that faint breath of the life aching to be fed.

Mercy says you are no longer a creature of brokenness and depravity. Grace says you are a masterpiece of delights.

Back to the flowers. My garden was a mess of death and need. Now I have a garden of delights. I pruned and the earth shot forth something new and healthy and all together lovely on its cleaned slate.

Look back at those flowers. Beautiful, huh?

It’s you. When God walks through His garden of delights–which He has a history of liking to do–His favorite spot of earth is right in front of a blossoming you.

Thank God for the mercy and flourish in the grace.