Once Every 3000 Years

I found a brief article hidden away in a back corner of the local newspaper. After some further research, I thought it was interesting enough to merited a post here.

The article was about the discovery of a rare flower found by a Chinese woman in Lushan Mountain, Jiangxi province, China. It is called the udumbara flower or youtan poluo. According to Buddhist legend it blooms once every 3000 years and supposedly marks the coming of a future king.

Rare and unknown things will almost always have legends and myths surrounding them. This flower is no exception. It is extremely tiny and they grow in white clusters which look very much like the eggs of lacewings.

I don’t know if it is true that this flower blooms so rarely or even if it exists. As Simone Preuss notes in her article I found here, “It is interesting to note, however, that the first sighting of an udumbara flower was in July 1997 at a Buddha statue in a temple in Korea, exactly 3,024 lunar years after Buddhism first emerged.” It is also interesting to note that, according to David Emery “they don't match any known species of plant life…”

Do we find things only when we look for them? Is it about being aware of the possibilities and opening our eyes? Or is it a matter of wanting so desperately for something to be true that we close our eyes to other facts? Or do we even disbelieve because we don’t want it to be true?

For me my faith in God is so much more than simply wanting something to be true. Admittedly I did only look for Him when I became aware of the possibility of Him. I looked for Him because I needed Him. But our Lord asks from us more than blind faith. He asks us to learn of Him. He asks us to think about Him. He asks us to be prepared and aware, and He gave us the scriptures and the Holy Spirit to guide us. He reassures us that He is the way and the truth and the life. (John 14:6)

Be Prepared

When I first became a Christian I was all passion and very little actual knowledge. Then someone asked me why I became a Christian. Well that stumped me. “It’s because Jesus died for me,” I’d say. Then the person would look a little baffled and say, “Yeah but what does that mean?”

I knew in my heart what it meant. I knew that Jesus was Lord in my life. But I was hopeless at expressing myself. I just knew it was right for me and I knew it would be right for them too if only they understood what I understood. The problem was learning to say it in a way that offered confidence and clarity rather than stumbling over vague explanations.

In 1 Peter 3:15 we are told to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Not only are we to do this for the people who might ask, but it’s important to do this for ourselves as well. The more we know about our Lord, the deeper our relationship grows.

I remembered hearing something said in a bible study group about a part of my faith I’d never thought about. The person said it with such eloquence and even though it was a thing I already knew in my heart, it made such a difference to me to have it said out loud in easily understood words. It clarified my thoughts. It confirmed my faith. And it gave me a real buzz.

This is why it is important to think about our faith and to be prepared.

My First Heart Beat

Before I became a Christian I considered myself to be a good person. I followed all the rules, I did all the right things, I fitted into society in an acceptable way. I even went to a Christian school. If there was an award given for the way I lived, I could have won a golden statue.

My acceptance speech would have been grand: 'I would like to thank my parents and my upbringing, but I would especially like to congratulate myself for my cleverness and innate goodness. Thank you, very much.' I believe I would have been rather pleased with myself. But it would have been a lie.

I entertained dark thoughts. I harbored impatience with others. I was selfish and at times unkind. I was careless and self-involved. I did things that I knew were wrong just so that I would be accepted in a crowd. In truth I was never perfect. But there was more I discovered about myself. I was weak, I was frail and I was afraid.

My mother was a Christian and she was also my best friend. We had long conversations about anything and everything. We could talk for hours about the meaning of the universe, teenage angst, or about the color the sky turns on stormy days. Because I was a good person I tolerated our conversations about God. I didn’t fully understand the devotion behind her words. I believed in a god, but he was a distant god. He was not for me on any kind of personal level. Sure, he created the world and everyone in it, but that’s where his interest ended.

It took my mum’s passionate words, and God’s powerful, life-changing touch, to open my eyes and show me how wrong I was. Christ didn’t just die for everyone in general, to save a species that God created so long ago. Jesus suffered and died and rose again for me. He did the same for you. It was an act of love to save each and every one of us, on an individual, and very personal, level.

I came to realize that God knows me by name. He knows all my idiosyncrasies, every thought I’ve ever had and will ever have. He knows the things that make me smile. He knows my fears and my irritations. He knows everything about me and yet he still wants to save me. Jesus’ act of devastating sacrifice became for me irrefutable proof of God’s love for me.

My blind eyes could finally see, and it seemed I had not lived before that summer day back in the 80s when I accepted Christ into my life. I suddenly found myself reborn into a world of fire and ice. I didn’t know it was possible to feel such life. It was not a thing I could describe. I felt suffused. There was suddenly more of it than this body was worthy to hold. And the love that came with it was a furnace that burned my soul with passion. I could do anything. I could have moved mountains or parted the seas.

This was the life that Christ gave me. This was how the heart beat of my faith in God began.