An old watch maker was summoned to the home of a dear friend. The friend’s son was very sick and the friend wanted company. In the early evening, the doctor came out and told them that the boy’s fever was severe. If the fever broke before midnight, then the boy would probably live. If not…

After the watch maker had been asked the time on multiple occasions, he gave his pocket watch to his friend. Every few minutes, the friend would check the watch and then snap it shut angrily. Few words were spoken. As the dread hour approached, the checking got more frequent, the snapping more angry.

Shortly before midnight, the doctor came out of the boy’s room. He was tired. He wiped his glasses and then he smiled. The fever had broken. The friends hugged. The watch was given as a celebratory gift. The watch maker went home.

Days later, the friend came by to see the watch maker. The watch never seemed to keep the right time. The watch maker adjusted the springs slightly and sent it back. Three times it came back and three times the watch maker looked at it, but could find nothing wrong.

The fourth time the watch came back, the watch maker knew that the problem was not with the watch. He set the watch to the time they found out that the son would live and then fixed it their permanently. He attached a note for his friend.

“My dear friend, I have checked this watched many times and am convinced the problem lies not with the watch, but with your perception of the watch. Every time you checked it that night, you ascribed to the watch the power to save your son. That power never lay with the watch. The watch was only telling you the time, but you asked the question so much, you began to feel the watch was refusing your request. Now every time you look at it, you remember one of those times when you did not get the answer you wanted. I want my gift to you to be a good one, so I have now fixed your watch so that every time you look at it, you will remember God’s answered prayer. From now on, every time you look at it, it will be the right time for God to intervene.”

For most of my life, God has taught me through short quick illustrations that I could apply to my life in meaningful ways. Jesus uses these images to teach, although His are always better and richer and deeper and layered and…well you get the picture.

The parables that God gives me personally almost always come at times when I’m not expecting them and right after something that the lesson illustrates. So here are four that I have been given recently. Remember that these are illustrations were given to me, so they’ll seem dumbed down to the general population. I’m hoping that when you see the simplicity of the lessons, you’ll start to realize He’s been teaching you as well.

Number One. Bee-ing in the yard.

When I was a child, I was very afraid of bees. If they were near me, I was afraid, if they were on me, I lost my mind. Being a tall, skinny child, this was quite the display. As I got older, and got into gardening, I learned a lot about bees and came to respect their place in the world. I also learned that when they were out by themselves gathering nectar for their honey production, they cared very little about me and would rather get out of my way than kill themselves stinging me for no gain to themselves or the hive. So I walk with authority through my garden and ignore them and they ignore me. But, should a hive spring up on my property, well, then they get a little touchy. The deeper into their territory I get, the more likely I am to get stung….repeatedly. Now setting aside the symbiotic nature of the relationship between man and bee, this illustrates for me the relationship between us and the forces of evil. As long as I stick to my places of authority, evil may make incursion, but knowing it has no real power there, it will be reluctant to do something that will show how powerless it is. But if I wander into its place of authority, deliberately seeking out sinful behavior, then I will get stung…repeatedly. And with malice aforethought.

Number Two. Well this joke writes itself, really.

I have a very large dog that eats very large amounts of food. He is beautiful and awesome and the biggest pain in the butt and my best friend. He and I are the perfect size for each other and God uses him to teach me about myself every day. When you have a large dog that eats large amounts of food, there will be an eventual large end result. While people may appreciate your large dog, they will not appreciate those large end results being left in their yard. So you must be diligent. Super freaking 4 AM with a flashlight and a pooper scooper diligent. Because, the piles your dog leaves will not be mistaken for the piles the Shih Tzu next door leaves. So you are diligent, but every once in a while, you forget. That is what will be noticed. Not the thousand times you cleaned up your dog’s poop and the poop from dog’s that weren’t yours just because you were there and had a scooper. The irony being, the more diligent you are about this task, the more likely that someone will notice when you miss. So it is with sin in your life. The better you do at eliminating sin in your life, the more obvious the ones you haven’t gotten scooped up yet will be. This is actually a complement to your spiritual life in that you’re moving in such a fashion that individual sins stand out rather than an overall atmosphere of sinfulness. But that won’t make it any more fun for you. Just continue in your diligence. You aren’t really doing it for the ones that may point it out. You’re doing it for the one who loved you anyway.

Number Three. In to me see.

There are plenty of things I do with my big old dog to keep him healthy and happy. I love him. What I often forget is that what he most desperately desires is time alone with me, doing a thing or doing no thing at all. We have a pen in back which he has outgrown in terms of genuine exercise. He can cross its longest parts in fifteen bounding strides. Yet he loves to be out there with me. Just the two of us. Because in this time, he shares my attention with no one. So here is, a kind of place of prayer for him. Where intimacy with his “dad” can be achieved, understanding beyond words can be obtained and life can be enjoyed one on one. We should all have this place with The Father. We should all have somewhere we go knowing that He is all we have to focus on, and trusting that He will meet us there. I have seen churches try to produce this in their worship time with music too loud and rooms too dark. This is trying to produce intimate space in a place of corporate understanding. Like teenagers trying to make out at the movies, these times produce more fumbling than intimacy. The time Gods seeks with us must be us alone with Him. Where He is all there is. Find that place and see if the world does not change there.

Number Four. Tomorokoshi.

A while back, I noticed an unusual plant growing in a container that did not have good drainage and I had not been able to keep anything growing in. I was told it was a weed, but as I could not grow anything in the container, I was a little keen to know what kind of plant could grow in it. It was not hurting anything, so I left it. The plant was pretty and it grew and I enjoyed it, but one day it flowered and I was in love. I don’t know why I loved the flowers so much. It may have been because they were so tiny, or their orchid like appearance, or the way they terminated the stalks they grew from so that the plant itself seemed to be showing its purpose in the daily chorus of the little blue and yellow flowers. Either way, it has become one of my favorite items in my garden and it greets me each day with a fresh batch of blessing. It is called Japanese Corn Flower and I love it. It’s important that we understand the things in our life, but sometimes that understanding can only come with time. What some people may think is a weed, may turn out to be a source of nourishment for you. It is true that when you recognize that something is destructive in your life then you need to pluck that thing out. But it is also true that our Father gives good gifts to His children and you may want to spend some time letting something unwrap itself so that you may understand the goodness you’ve been given.

Japanese Corn Flower