“The day came…”

"The day came..."

“The day came when the risk of remaining in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin
“So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’” John 4: 28-29.

Yesterday I ventured into the relatively new-to-me, very exciting, but often intimidating practice of visual journaling, a technique of using visual media to let your mind and heart wander. I’m eager to tell you that I feel terribly incompetent at it, and it feels risky to share the pages that came, but since doing so seems to be the action of living this story, here goes…

I opened my journal to a page in progress, which I had begun by pasting a driveway discovery: a shell/bud/pod from our crepe myrtle trees that had “flowered” in the most exotic manner. [Yes, I recognize none of this is correct botanically:)].

Flipping through some books to get ideas for what to do next, I saw the old quote, familiar from greeting cards (probably to the author, Anais Nin’s, great chagrin), and debated whether or not to use it, because it seemed a little clichéd. But I have my own story of when the “day came,” when a dear friend sent me these encouraging words, so I decided it should go in.

As I worked, though, my mind and heart ran to the story of the Samaritan woman, who likely never forgot the day when she was invited out of the shame of her sin to live in the love she was made for. Hers is a stunning story of “the day came….” Jesus asked her to fetch water for him, and the day came. Jesus told her to call her husband, and the day came. Jesus told her he was the Messiah, and the day came.
The risk of remaining in the bud was apparently no more an option even, and she ran back to the townspeople who had helped hold her in her tightly-closed hard shell and told them about a man who “told her everything she ever did.” The woman drank from the well of Living Water (sorry to mix the metaphors but not really sorry because Paul did it all the time☺). Bursting forth into bloom, with Jesus as the fixing center, her lovely colors spread into full glory, bounding from the page.

So then I had to make a sunflower, my personal symbol of hope, bursting off the page, with Christ at the center.

The day to be freed by the compelling love of our Lord Jesus Christ has come. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, his mercies are new. May we rejoice and burst forth with this great good news!