Easter Lily

March 31st, 2013 11:00am

    Happy Easter! Another first for Lily.  We are so proud she made it to celebrate our risen Lord with us today!  This morning, once again, my heart is full.  I have in my arms, as I type, my very own Easter Lily.  More beautiful, pure, and glorious than any other that graces the alters and crosses in countless churches around the world this morning.  

    Although I had done it before, last night I couldn't help reading all about Easter Lillies on the Internet. The trumpet shaped white flower, that shares a name with my daughter, has over the centuries, come to symbolize purity, virtue, hope, and life.  I can't help but to draw the obvious parallels to what my Lily means to me.  One only needs to lay their eyes on her sweet, serene face to see that she represents the picture of purity and virtue among all of human kind.   This brings me to something that our pastor said while praying with us the other day.  This stuck in my mind, because I don't think I had quite thought of it this way before.  He was thanking God for everything about Lily, and he said "thank you Gracious Heavenly Father that Lily will never know sin."  What a wonderful, relieving thought!  To experience this life without ever knowing the darkness of sin!  Even though Lily's battle with her broken and imperfect body, (which like all disease and death, is ultimately the result of all mankind's sin,) she will never be able to understand and experience the darkness that comes with willingly disobeying God.  This gives me great joy, as a father, for her.  It frames a picture of her as representing, like the Easter Lillies, the most pure and virtuous among us.  It also serves to reveal  by contrast my own filthy sins.  Oh how I, like my Heaven Father, hate sin.   I reflect the sentiment of the apostle Paul "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24).  Why do we do it?  Why serve self, when we have the opportunity in this life to serve Christ and others?  Because we like Paul, and everyone else, wrestle with our depraved, self serving, sin nature, and we cannot overcome it.  But, there is hope.  The love that fills me for this perfect child with a broken body reminds me of the love of my Heavenly Father.  He looks on us with uncomparable compassion and love. This hope, is where my Easter Lily points me.  The hope we have in Christ. Who loved us so much that He took on the full consequence of our sin for us.  He fought and won the battle we cannot win, the battle of sin and death.  Just as I would, in a heartbeat, take the burden Lily carries so that she could have life,  so Jesus did for all of us.  She helps me to understand that better than I ever did before.  

    Lastly, Easter Lillies symbolize life.  It is not just this  physical life, but the eternal life promised to those who believe on Christ unto salvation, and sealed by his defeat of death which we celebrate this morning.  Jesus rose from the grave, and he has promised that we also will live again with Him, and those believers who have gone on before us, forever.  My Lily has made me begin to think about life a little differently than before.  First to appreciate the gift of this life, because the measure of it is so short.  Just this morning we had another breathing episode, and for a full 20-30 minutes Heather and I again held her hands, and did our best once again, to make sure she knew that, if this was her time, she would pass directly from our arms to those of her Savior Jesus, and not for one second would she be alone.  It was a tough battle, and she fought bravely.  And once again she decided not yet.  Almost immediately, the other kids were up and in the kitchen digging through their Easter Baskets.  The three of us got up and went in to join them, not wanting to let that experience go by without all of us being together.  I hope we continue to appreciate the present like that even when Lily has gone on.  Also, she brings me to think about the eternal life we have in Christ.  I find so much comfort in knowing we will be reunited again with her someday, and that she will be in the loving care of Jesus until then and forever.  Our Easter Lily  continues to minister to us every second. Thank you Lily Belle for ministering to me yet again.  And thank you Lord, once again for revealing yourself through her.

-Brian (Lily's Dad)