That Pesky Tooth!

Round back, by the compost bin, snowdrops have silently appeared, as if overnight. Everywhere there is a carpet of delicate white bells, tinged with the springiest of greens, heralding the warmer weather to come. No fanfare. They just responded to the stimuli and grew, blossoming smiles all around.

On the other hand, that pesky tooth. The dentist has expended Herculean efforts to eradicate the infection, but still today it nags on, reminding me it’s there. 

 

Wait for the Lord, I read. Be strong and take heart and wait. He is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. 

Seek his face. He usually won’t announce himself with a fanfare; neither does he nag. In the busyness of life he can be overlooked, forgotten. Today, I will seek his face in the minutiae of the day. I am filled with expectancy and joy at the prospect of an encounter with the Almighty God, the lover of my soul.

Gone for Good

Two days ago, the carpet of snowdrops and sprinkling of golden and purple crocus disappeared under a white blanket of snow. Today the sun beams out of a windswept sky – clouds streaking through the blue expanse – and those battered bulbs are raising their weary heads. 

Sometimes it seems that it’s the vulnerable and precious who are dumped on in life. Good to know that bad things are like the snow, quickly disappearing in the warmth of God’s love. It can seem that his love is slow in coming at times, but when it breaks through, the beauty of those battered lives is breath-taking.

Come to me, Jesus invites us. If you’re tired out and weary and needing a rest, he’s the one to go to. Keep company with me, he says, and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

One day all the bad things will be gone forever.

Bagging dead leaves

Stirrings of hope through a blanket of dead leaves

Last autumn, I spent a few hours bagging dead and dying leaves to provide mulch in a couple of years. But inevitably there remains a thick rug of dark brown mouldering leaves on some of the flower beds.

Because I see the snowdrops budding and opening on the grass in the ‘orchard’, I know that beneath those rugs of leaves on the flower beds sprout bulbs which will display a variety of colours as spring begins to reveal herself. The snowdrops will be pushing hard to reach the light. Time for me to get out there and clear away the detritus of last season, so that the new shoots have space and light and air. 

Hope. Hope sometimes gets overwhelmed, buried by words of discouragement or unrealised plans.

What detritus of disappointment or dead dreams lies heavy on my expectations and hopes today? 

Time to clear it away, whatever negative experiences, encounters, fears and anxieties disfigure and stunt my hopes. Time to prepare myself in expectation for new opportunities, new ideas as creation bursts forth in reaction to the reliable rhythm established by our loving heavenly Father.

God is not surprised by the sometimes grinding litany of personal, national and global negativities. He saw them coming, and he has a plan, a plan for good, a plan that will bring about justice for all.

Hope. Today I want to bubble with joy as a woman of hope, hope in the God who is faithful. So with his help, I will again work to root out any bitterness and fears, and clear the way for a new season of faith to blossom forth, fragrant and beautiful, so that Jesus can draw others to himself through me.

Hope in our loving heavenly Father is never misplaced.

Snowdrops!

The sun blazed out of a bright blue sky. I say blazed but actually there wasn’t a huge amount of heat in it ... but it was glorious nonetheless. Felicity and I headed for the park and joined the other preschoolers and grandparents on the seesaw and the swings. As we headed home, the path parallels the River Don and the detritus and mess left by recent flooding is strewn randomly around.

Through the mess, though, the snowdrops have emerged and now bob their delicate heads in the light breeze. The snowdrops don’t have strong stems nor helmeted heads; they are fragile and demure. Yet drawn by the season and the sun, they are up. 

If they had appeared too soon, the raging floodwaters would have destroyed the wee plants. But now, after the storm, they have appeared in all their glory.

As I pushed this precious baby through the spectacular scenery, I was well and truly in the moment. It doesn't get better than this...

Snowdrops

Is there a flower more exquisite than a snowdrop? Open to debate, and I myself might even dispute that claim, but right now, in mid-February, with most of the Scottish landscape a shade of brown or grey, the cheery white snowdrops make me smile. Just when it seemed like winter might go on forever, suddenly there they are, reminding me that spring is just around the corner.

They form bright splashes of white on the lawn and in the flower beds, but close up, there is so much more to them than just a white splash. There is a delicate little bridge of spring green on the outer scalloped edge of the central trumpet. And inside the trumpet! Three heart-shaped designs, the shoulders of the hearts corresponding to the scallops, and the points reaching into the centre of the flower, with its delicate little orange stamens. The green is not a solid block of color, either, but is formed of thin striped threads of green and white. Exquisite.

And the snowdrops come up, year after year, without my remembering even where the wee bulbs are planted. Each year they multiply. Because of my rather hap-hazard gardening efforts, there are always some which have been dug up and scattered in surprising new places, quite unintentionally.

Maybe I am a hap-hazard gardener, but God certainly isn’t. These wee treasures didn’t just happen. Somebody designed them. Somebody who is a creative genius. And he looked at the snowdrop, and he saw that it was good.

And he smiled as he thought of the pleasure it would give me today. What an amazing attention to detail and to the seemingly insignificant.

Isn’t God just amazingly wonderful?