Quiet, fluffy white flakes of new snow fill nooks and crevices everywhere. At first glance, the landscape echoes bareness and desolation.
Yet, in the depth of winter solitude, way out in back corner of our yard, there stands a young, bare deep purple lilac. Although now stripped of its once green, leafy and flowering branches, this winter lilac courageously stands alive bare and wide open to cold winter wind and resiliently proclaims for a 6th winter, “I am here.”
Our tender fledgling lilac, a very small cutting from my mother’s giant purple lilac bush at our family home, has grown deep roots and wishes to thrive just where it is. We never had transplanted a bush before and my extension service friend said all we could do was try. Year after year, Lilac defiantly has decided to stand its ground amid subzero weather and deep snow, parched drought ground, hungry munching animals, close shaves with the lawnmower and trimmer. What keeps it going?
It keeps coming back. This dear friend seems to thrive. We, in our humanness, provide hope-filled efforts at tender loving care, wiring, kind words, supplements, covers, watering. What keeps it going despite our imperfect care? We know it really is not us.
Deep down beneath our cold sterile ground, unbeknownst to surface onlookers, life nurtures life. Deep flourishing roots are fortified under the snowy earth, filling the teenage to adult bush with all it needs to not only survive, but thrive the seasons.
Within my heart lives the image of the Gardener’s warm and tender, large Hands, He gently but firmly reaching down and providing the hopeful, awaiting lilac all it needs, nourishing the thirsty soil in unexpectedly bountiful ways…through the year, the tough seasons, to make our lilac strong to face whatever comes.
God is like that with us. In the seasons of our lives, we are tempted to feel in our bodies the cold, the pain, the lack. But as Jesus taught us, remember to look up, expectantly with Hope in our hearts. Just as our lilac innately knows, we have Faith to know that what you need will be provided because we are loved beyond measure. God will provide. Maybe not in the manner or time you expect, but perhaps, even in a more beautiful way than you could imagine.in just the way we need it to happen.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us… “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body.” Tenderly and warmly we are given what we need when we have courage to openly thrive for Him as we are held in and by Love.
How can we get through these difficult seasons? Look up. Listen. Pray. Read Scriptures. Hold another’s hand. Reach out and find no one is ever alone. We are in this together. Amen.
© 2024 Bonnie L. Smith-Davis
Awakening Light 