This is good

This is from a book that I am reading called Hiding in Plain Sight by Molly Wolf. The book is just her reflections about God in her life and in everyday occurances. She says in the introduction to the book that God is "...not locked in the tabernacle, not hiding behind a mass of comples, eye-crossing philosophical concepts, not absent from our pain, not Out There Somewhere, not runing the universe like clockwork automation, but here with us, between and among us, in the laundry, the scutwork, the landscape we walk through..."

So this is the first one in the book and it's called The Rich Folk's Yard...Hope you like it!

Typical Saturday: hit the ground running and keep running until somehow it all gets done. Or most of it gets done. Or at least the bits I can get done, and the rest I’ll get around to later, I hope…
To the city to drop off a child and run some necessary errands. At one point in a great deal of running around, the most intelligent way to get from Point A to Point B in the inevitable tearing hurry was to take the parkway through The Rich Folks’ Yard, the area of the city where live the Mandarins and Ambassadors and People in High Places and People with Lots and Lots of Money. It’s a very handsome area, and the parkway that winds through it is both scenic and great fun to drive. But what gave me the giggles, what made my morning, in fact, was the realization that this area had the same—I don’t know if you’d call it a problem exactly; more a condition, like dandruff—as my lowly un-mowed back yard and every roadside and field I had passes this morning.
Dandelions.
The parkway verge was awash with horticultural bastards. And most cheerful they looked, too, swatches of butter-yellow against the tender green of young grass.
The dandelion cocks a snook at propriety and beams a sort of wicked grin back at creation. The dandelion is the floral equivalent of a short sharp blast on a kazoo. And there within sight of meticulously groomed, ever-so-proper, lovingly tended upper crust yards and gardens, the little buggers were whooping it up, Cheered me enormously.
We can wallow in the Painfulness of Reality, and reality is in fact painful as hell at times—just as dandelions really are weeds. We can and should be ever aware of our status as very real Miserable Offenders. We do need to be careful and disciplined and honorable and integral and good in our daily lives. This is all true and important, because the alternative is chaos.
But.
Look at an average abandoned city lot and you’ll find life upspringing, invading, taking over, breaking down the grim order we have created. Saplings spring up in the gutter of a roof, drawing nourishment from dead leaves. Weeds invade the pavement, breaking it up. Wild vines swarm and, with their fingers, reduce our work to rubble. Some people find this discouraging, because it says something about the transience of human works. I find it greatly cheering, because it speaks to me of life’s abundance. It also appeals to my wicked side.
But it’s more than that: it says to me that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be glorious its sheer aliveness. Love has nothing to do with perfection. After thinking about dandelions and how fond I am of the silly buggars, I begin to suspect that maybe God loves us because we are sinners, not in spite of that fact. I think of the people I love, and I know that I love them all the more for their humanity, not in spite of it. Knowing that a person is unsure and vulnerable and much less than perfect makes me love that person more, not less.
If human love is a reflection, however pale, of God’s love for us, then maybe that says something about how God sees our faults and failings: not with blind-eyed indulgence, not minimizing the problems, but truly and with love. We are all such vulnerable children doing our best in a hard world. We are not perfect, weed-free lawns, and no matter how hard we work, we barley seem to stay ahead of the mess.
But we are loved, wholly and completely loved. And that’s where the joy comes from, sneaking up on us, blooming like an upstart glowing dandelion, breaking through like daylight, lighting up the sun.