Hey, friends...here's a column I wrote for the paper several weeks ago and never got around to posting....hope you like it:
Our beautiful world is a love story, told in pictures.
St. Paul says we can learn about God by looking at His reflection in His creation.
We
can read His words and we can hear sermons preached, but one of the
best ways I know to learn what He's really like is to look at this
world He made and observe how it operates. To see Nature in motion.
Like a book tells us about its author, a painting about its painter, a
symphony about its composer, the natural world reflects the personality
of its Maker, shows us what He delights in, what He's all about.
Right now, in our yard just a few blocks from the Square, a small drama is being played out. A lesson is there for the learning.
What's
left of last fall's grass has faded to the color of oatmeal, and a few
stray brown leaves have been mashed into it here and there. But for the
past week or so, the dreary lawn has been spangled with a happy flurry
of tiny flowers in Easter-egg colors — crocuses, pastel yellow and
lavender and shell-white, with yolk-yellow centers. And if you look
closely, you’ll see, almost hidden by the rusty azalea bushes, a
scattering of snowdrops' delicate porcelain bells. Crocuses and
snowdrops — the hopeful vanguard of springtime.
And if you
look carefully in your yard or your neighbor's this afternoon, you're
liable to see green shoots peeking out from muddy flowerbeds and at the
corners of sidewalks. Flower bulbs are sending up their first leaves,
poking up out of the wet, cold dirt to brave the icy wind.
Like the
bright pansies we set out last fall, the young shoots have already
weathered some storms. Encrusted with ice crystals and sugared with
snowflakes, still they've grown, insistently pushing up toward the
sparse sunlight. Hidden within their brave greenness, they hold bright
promise of flowers — daffodils, hyacinths, paper-whites. Leafy lessons
for us, hand-written in green chlorophyll ink.
The new
plants have sprung from homely brown bulbs that have spent the winter
resting underground, regrouping, recharging, recuperating, rejuvenating
for a season, tucked away under a blanket of earth. Then, called forth
on just the right day, the tender green shoots spring free from their
earthy blanket and pop their heads out of the covers, like grinning
tousle-headed toddlers impatient for a new day to delight in.
Isn't
that just like what happens in our lives? We have our own seasons.
Springtimes of tender newness, of planting seeds in gentle sunshine, of
soft rains....summertimes of blazing warmth and fertile growth and
electrifying storms....breezy autumns of gathering the fruit we've
tended in the slanting yellow sunlight....and then quiet wintertimes,
when we turn inward — maybe to grieve, or maybe just to rest and
reflect and gather our thoughts, and nourish ourselves with what we've
gathered in the harvest-time, and with memories of the beauty of
long-ago springs.
Sometimes winters seem long, and our
time underground drags slowly, our hearts held captive by the long cold
nights. But our spinning green Earth gradually moves closer to the sun,
and the days inch longer, and the long-missed warmth begins to gently
seep down into our centers, and something long-forgotten begins to stir
again. A tiny sprout, just faintly green, uncurls itself from the bulb,
and somehow knows to move upward through the dark toward the warmth and
light. Spiraling around the rocks in its way, the almost-leaf grows up
and up, until the moment comes and it breaks through the crust into the
sunshine.
I've seen it happen, and you have, too. A loving
mother loses her child, or a wife her husband, and icy grief freezes
her life into winter. The green leaves of her hope shrink back into the
dry brown bulb, and blooming joy withers, and she seems all but gone
herself. But her heart is just resting, healing, dormant, under the
blanketing snows of her sorrow. Then — on just the right day, at just
the right hour, the healing warmth surrounds her and the moist green
life hiding inside her dry, sore heart is called forth again by a
loving whisper. A tiny sprout ventures out, and soon, hope unfurls its
leaves, and bright joy blooms again.
Love stories told in pictures, for those who take time to look.
By Celia DeWoody
Copyright Harrison Daily Times 2008
Published Feb. 27, 2008
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