Ditch Lily Faith
I love this time of year when the “ditch lilies’ adorn the sides of the road and dance in meadows. Such simple beauty. They don’t worry about their less than perfect home – a roadside ditch, or what they’re to do. They’re content to just be; no high maintenance, they simply take root and bloom where they were planted, year after year. Their roots grow deep and God does the multiplication work deep under the soil, spreading their roots far and wide.
There are lessons to be learned from a ditch lily (also known as orange daylilies). I know it’s cliche but, bloom where you are planted is the first one to come to mind. I call it Ditch Lily Faith—the willingness to surrender to God’s will and simply bloom and be who God created me to be.
As prim and proper as the late Elisabeth Elliot ** was, her life reminds me of a ditch lily. She bloomed where she was planted—even in the remote jungle amidst the people who took her first husband, Jim’s, life. She once said, “The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and have, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else, would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler life, the greater peace.”
God is more interested in my being than doing. First and foremost it means to be found in Him: “and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,” Philippians 3:9
It also means to be ever attentive to His will for my life and allowing Him to direct and redirect, so I will be all that He desires me to be for His glory. I’m His workmanship and He’s created in me good works for me to do for His glory (Ephesians 2:10)…to bloom wherever He plants me.
More than gold or silver, I yearn for a heart that is surrendered to His will and content to be His for His glory alone. All that I have is His. All that I desire is His will. This place, this moment in time, is where He has planted me. I merely want to bloom and grow so people will stand in awe of Him and not anything I’ve done. I simply want to be His.
A Closing Prayer by Elisabeth Elliot
Lord, we give You thanks for all that You in Your mercy have given us to be and to do and to have. Deliver us, Lord, from all greed, to be and to do and to have anything not in accord with Your holy purposes. Teach us to rest quietly in Your promise to supply, recognizing that if we don’t have it we don’t need it. Teach us to desire Your will–nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.
** Elisabeth Elliot lost her first husband, Jim, while on the mission field in Equador; murdered by the very people they came to share Christ with. After Jim was martyred, she returned to that same tribe and lived among them, along with her 3-year-old daughter, for 5 years. That is unwavering faith and forgiveness. That is ditch lily faith—cut down, but comes back.
Thank you, Marsha, for this powerful message and the wonderful quotes and prayer from Elisabeth Elliot. She is truly an inspiration and her suffering has produced so much of value for all of us who have read her writings.
I love the title, too!
Thank you, Katie! She’s one of my heroes of the faith. I have a strange connection to her. In the early 1970’s, Rachel Saint and Dayuma came and spoke in the chapel services at Florida Bible College. Rachel Saint was Nate Saint’s sister. Nate was one of the other missionaries killed by the Auca Indians. Dayuma befriended Rachel and Elisabeth when they returned to the village. She helped them learn the language and became the first convert to Christianity. I’m not sure if it was the same year as the chapel services, but Dayuma’s son enrolled as a student at the college for a while and was my husband’s roommate one semester.
Powerful message, Marsha. I still struggle at times about where God has planted me. But more and more I see why He planted me in the desert. May He uses me for His glory.
Thank you, Iris. I must admit I, too, struggle at times–especially now when life is transitioning and he’s uprooting us and transplanting us into a “different ditch.” All I know is, there is beauty to behold no matter where we are on this earth as long as I’m yielded to Him.