Can We be Like Flowers in God's Garden? {And a FREE printable St. Ignatius quote poster}

                     
“Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of them.”  Luke 12:27

So many times I am reminded of this verse. My momma used to always quote a similar verse growing up about and birds and lilies...basically how God cares for us.

Well, I am not a flower and boy, sometimes I tend to toil and spin around all my worries. If we only had the strength for complete abandonment to God's will, how splendidly would He robe in His Grace and we would totally be at peace. Reading through the lives of saints you notice a common theme for those that toiled in the work of the Lord (not their own worries) with trust in His will...stuff just seemed to come together. I could compile a huge list but lets just take a peak at two awesome examples.

Mother Teresa did so many things just by trusting that Jesus would come through if He wanted something done. She didn't stress about how things were going to turn out, but simply trusted that if it was God's will it would work and if not, then it simply wasn't. It would be great if I could apply this more to my life. So many times we stress about things that stressing over isn't going to do a bit of good and we waste precious time that we could be otherwise smiling and loving our families. If you really want peace, take a few minutes to smile a times you wouldn't normally. I have noticed especially with children that a smile goes a million miles...and they usually smile right back. Sometimes that simple smile is all that's needed to change the direction of a downward spinning day.

Now look at how St. Ignatius and how he prayed.

" Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me." ~St. Ignatius Loyola

Though he lead a life (you really need to read about his life, it's entirely too lengthy to sum up here in short words) full of trials and hardship getting to his goals, a sort of unearthly peacefulness and perseverance characterized this saint!

                       
Can we challenge ourselves to smile more and completely give over our life to Jesus daily? I am going to try and start our day with the prayer of St. Ignatius and smile a little more this school year. Here is a poster you can print out and put up to remind you to give it all to Jesus at the start of each new day.