A BACKYARD VISIT

For this post, I’d like to invite you out to my backyard. You see, I find a sense of serenity beyond my home’s back door. I must warn you, though. Once you’re out here, remove your rose-colored glasses or you might miss the purpose of your visit.

Let’s take a walk down the back steps. If you’re squeamish over the word “rickety,” keep in mind those once ten-towering steps have endured a growing boy’s bounding leaps, many a winters’ past and harsher athletic conditions. More than a few replacement screws have shored up its lean over the years. By the way, stay to the right on your way down!

For city proper, a 1/10 of an acre is pretty impressive, but be careful where you step. Ginger, our ferocious yard beast, marks her territory well around the lumpy terrain filled with dandelions and untamed buttercups. Though our son wields the pooper scooper as best he can, canine cleanup is not one of his top priorities.

The rest of the patchy landscape houses hostas in takeover mode, towering canna lilies stationed along the perimeter, a couple of peonies bushes emitting the sweetest aroma, wild honeysuckle entwined on a makeshift, rollup fence and overgrown, crooked mulberry trees hovering over a 2-story, catty-wompus tree fort long abandoned for teenage pursuits.

Chaotic? Why yes, but this backyard has become my place of perspective.

It reveals calmness in calamity. It breathes in and out peace that goes beyond all understanding. No pretense. No grand appearance. Actually, those stairs have carried my family’s burdens up and down like a prayer yoke or a shout of praise. My perennials return without judgment and lavish a fragrance that rivals the perfume poured out on our Savior’s feet. Those hostas and cannas surround the perimeter like angels extending a hedge of protection over all who enter.

This place of perspective even takes into consideration the mess in my yard. I love my puppy girl but much like walking through life, let’s just say, we are bound to encounter the stuff left behind. Maybe you or someone you know is experiencing this:

• When their child’s first priority is self-serving and serving God doesn’t come up on their radar.
• When their company lets them go long before they are ready to retire.
• When the plan to save for a rainy day did not include the tsunami season their family just endured.
• When “baby carriage” came before love and marriage for their 16 year old daughter.
• When the school of hard knocks is the only place their child frequents on a daily basis and the legal system now enforces the rules of conduct.
• When their adult son has fully given up on himself and his family.
• When a vice such as alcohol, sex or drugs entices more than God.
• When the lump in their breast requires much more than a simple biopsy.

What perspective can be gained from a backyard and life’s complications? Although comfort might seem like an illusion when the reality of crap is all over your proverbial backyard, God’s Word offers provision in Psalm 23:1-4 –

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

God gives us great pause to trust Him in the complications, in the encounters where we have no control. His provision and promise as our Shepherd exchanges our anxieties with reassurances, our disappointments with favorable reception, our dread with Christ-centered reliance and even our crap with His companionship. I might not understand why stuff happens, but I don’t have to go through it alone and neither do you.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to my backyard. If you stepped in anything Ginger might have left behind, don’t worry. I have a hose. If it’s something else, let the Good Shepherd help you with that!

Blessings!