Kitchen Sink Lessons

Within your four walls there are places (at least for me) which are teaching places, worship places and resting places. Today I want to talk about my kitchen sink; It a teaching space. When I am at the kitchen sink, many of my unlovely characteristics spew forth. Sometimes out loud (to the pain of those within earshot) and sometimes I clink and clank dishes to the music of an inner, raging boil. Maybe the sink is one of God’s chosen places for me to learn because as I settle to the mundane tasks which meet me there, I repeatedly play false tapes, relive unfulfilled expectations and experience the darkness of my nature. I seem to become aware of a spiritual battle in this “holy place.” I am not saying this is the only geography that my falleness confronts me, or that I could just hate washing dishes, what I am trying to say is the sink is my “Peniel” where God regularly wrestles me. I seem to be challenged to surrender and come away with a deeper acceptance and love for Him.

I want to share a lesson that began in January when I was given a Hyacinth bulb as a gift. I placed it on the window sill at my kitchen sink. The bulb was a daily testimony as it developed in various stages from a green tip piercing the soil to a full puff of shameless perfumed blooms that overwhelmed me every time I approached my teaching spot. This planting brought Mark, chapter four verses twenty-six through twenty-nine to life for me.

A great portion of the life of this bulb appeared to be spent as blunt green protrusions which revealed little information of the true form it would take. Little of its life was spent displaying itself as a thick column of singular cotton candy flowers celebrating early spring. Its seemingly boring protrusional stages brought comments like...When are we going to see the flowers??...That’s it, that’s a Hyacinth?.... How much longer until it’s a real flower??? I always thought it interesting that I was totally powerless to force what would only come when the Husbandman was ready. If I had the power to do that, it would be false...evil.

My part in the life of the bulb was a surrender to the life process of a Hyacinth and a commitment to place a small amount of water in its soil each day and open the blinds...pretty simple really. However, many times I felt impatient with the slow growth, thinking, maybe it’s a dud. Often, I forgot my watering commitment because of the pace of the day and many times there were too many impatient little hands willing to help and the bulb became waterlogged. Yet, in some great providence, the plant was able to do what it was told to in spite of over or under commitment.

One of the happiest times while learning, was when I could see at the center of the protrusions the slightest hint of pink breaking out on a pale green cone. That was when I knew the promises would come and my bulb seemed most alive. It was hope. I didn’t have to see the full flower to know the beauty was there.

So many of my dear friends seem to be in the stages of ‘boring protrusions’ and others may be asking them where the heck is the flower, or they may be asking themselves....."Maybe I am just a dud, or worse, not a flower at all." I think we need to remember that flowers, though fragrant and a splendid show, are short lived and pale to the hidden life that actually produces them. This is a mystery that needs to be appreciated and accepted; especially by ones who only believe in flowers. My little bulb now rests quietly under a tree with heaven's potential in its now unattractive form. I have all but forgotten it but the Husbandman has not. This is what really matters most.

Obscurity is where all the life is happening---- it is the Kingdom. We must believe in the hidden life of all things. We are challenged to be committed when life feels like a boring formless protrusions. We are to hope in the mystery of the mundane and the slow to show. We are not to attempt the forcing of flowers to parade some outward effect for others or our impatient selves to see. That would be false....evil

Seeds become flowers, seeds become trees but "it is," as Oswald Chambers said, “in the innermost of the innermost that reveals the power of the life”. A little Hyacinth bulb on a kitchen windowsill proved that true.

"Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how."
Jesus
Mark 4:27