GROWING SEEDS: The One Thing You Can't Win Without

 

 

 As I sat in the high school auditorium last weekend, next to three newby Pageant attendees I coaxed there with the promise of pure entertainment, my face couldn't help but have a Julia-Roberts-coat-hanger-type-smile plastered all over it.  If I elbowed them once I elbowed them fifty times, "Isn't this just the greatest??" I said repeatedly.  They hesitantly agreed.

"When you seek My face in response to My love, both of us are blessed. 
This is a deep mystery, designed more for your enjoyment than for your understanding."*

Its no secret I love the Ms. Mt. Vernon Pageant......because, crazy as it may sound, God is sitting smack-dab in every row, every clap, every click of every camera snapping memories.  It's a Polaroid of this blessed little town we have been chosen to live in, friends.

Many of us come from a large city....a place where the cost of your dress, the maker of your shoes, the size of your waist....matters.  But not here in Mt. Vernon.  We live in a place where it is not just okay, but necessary to begin the pageant with heartfelt prayer and our hands over our hearts as we sing along to God Bless America. A place where most every girl thanked God FIRST and the local Dodge dealership SECOND that provided her a truck to ride in the Christmas Parade because her PaPa's truck broke down.  A place where it didn't matter whether your dress cost $200 or $20....it was the confidence and the joy that radiated out of that dress that mattered.  A place where the color of your skin, the style of your hair or the size of your waist had no bearing on the outcome at all.....and you were most grateful for Dairy Queen and Blizzards.....but always God first.

"I am not a grim God who discourages pleasure,
I delight in your enjoyment of everything that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable. 
Think on these things and My Light in you will shine brighter day by day."*

And I pray each contestant, each parent, each audience member like me, never forgets the one thing we can't win without.......God.  He's the real reason we were placed in this precious town.....whether sitting next to one another at the Ms. Mt. Vernon Pageant or in the pews of this beautiful church...a place where, if we open our eyes wide, we can see Him in everything we do and everyone we meet.

"I have awakened in your heart a strong desire to know Me."

*Sarah Young