Blooms among the Dead Wood

I’m trudging along the usual path Dusty and I walk. I’ve forgotten it’s spring. Well, no wonder, since I’m still wearing five layers and a woolly hat and gloves. That wind is brutal.

So, I’ve forgotten it’s spring and my eyes are downcast. It’s been a busy day; now it’s time to cook dinner, skype my mom, and here I am walking the dog, feeling vaguely stressed. I wanted to go to Messy Church tonight and meet some of the folks who are coming along, but my annual check-up at the hospital was over an hour late, so I missed it. 

Not in the best of moods. Suddenly, my eye is drawn to a splash of colour down in the gully of detritus and dead wood. It’s just a wee dip off the path, but every year, about this time, there is a cheerful display of yellow and hot pink in big clusters of primroses. Wild primroses.

I can but smile. How lovely. How wonderful to discover a thing of beauty in the midst of drab and dreary brown. 

Beauty is all around us, in the most unlikely of places. We just don’t see it sometimes. But if we let our eye wander; if we linger and pause and pay attention, we might just be amazed at the beauty to be found everywhere.

There’s a story in the Bible about David. God spoke to Samuel and told him to go visit a certain family in Bethlehem, and he would tell Samuel which of the sons of the family was chosen to be King of Israel. Samuel went, and as Jesse, the dad, paraded six sons before him, Samuel was shocked as God rejected them, one after the other. Each one was good looking and seemed a distinct possibility for kingship, but God said no. “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” The Lord looks at the heart.

Finally Samuel asked Jesse if that was all the sons he had and he admitted he had one, much younger, who was out shepherding the flocks. When David was summoned and came before Samuel, God said YES. “Rise and anoint him; this is the one,” God said. (1 Samuel 16)

I could have walked blindly past those primroses today, and missed a moment of joy. I wonder who else I walked past today, never giving them a second glance. 

There is always the possibility of blooms among the dead wood.