Spring has always been a time of new beginnings. The garden catalogs come out. Flowers and trees begin to bloom, baby animals and birds are everywhere of new beginnings. We make all kinds of promises about what we will do with our yards, and we really mean it.

This last few weeks our yard has really taken off, and not in a good way! With Gregg sick and Mike and Kate busy with school, the yard has become overgrown with weeds. Bright yellow dandelions compete with deep purple and white violets, lavender phlox, and chickweed blossoms resulting in a riot of color.

Last week I stepped outside to fill a bird feeder and was immediately struck by a sight that filled me with wonder and amazement. The entire front yard was filled with butterflies – hundreds of them! They floated and landed everywhere – on the bird feeder, on the house, even on me.

Entranced, I looked over at my neighbors’ yards, but on their beautiful expanses of perfect green there was not a single butterfly to be seen. Suddenly it dawned on me; they were attracted by the flowers everywhere. They had chosen our yard because of the weeds!

Our spirits are often like my front yard – overgrown with weeds, a tangled confusion of beauty and unsightliness, of joy and sorrow. We compare ourselves to the “perfect” people in our lives and beat ourselves up because we can’t be more like them. We long to get our lives and souls under control, to tame them, to bring them to some sense of what God wants them to be.

And yet, who are we to say what God wants? Throughout the Bible God uses unexpected people in unexpected ways to fulfill His plans. People whose lives and spirits were less than perfect, people who some might have said had no business being close to God. Jacob, Rahab, Moses, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul – all were flawed. And yet God chose them.

Just like the butterflies chose what in my eyes was simply an overgrown, under-mowed lawn. To me it was ugly but to them it was beautiful and full of life. And that’s the way it is with God. He sees the part of us that is beautiful, true and full of life, and if we let Him, He uses it in this world to further His Kingdom.

Our job is as followers of The Way (Jesus's way!) is to take the news of this amazing love to the streets, to the people who need to hear it most: those who feel as if their very spirits have been crushed by weeds and poisoned by the negativity that the world spreads.  Our job is to tell them, to convince them, that God's radical and extravagant love has chosen THEM, and their spirits, to change this world.

I wish you a spring of radical renewal, spiritual rebirth, and new beginnings  And may the garden of your spirit be filled with butterflies!