Full flower

The silent stillness of a frosty morn. As the sun, hanging low on the horizon, creeps a bit higher, long rosy shadows spread across the whitened fields. Sheep stand and lie frozen on the ground. No breath of wind ruffles the bare branches of the larch tree. 

And then ... life. Birds swoop and swirl, hop and jump in their constant quest for food. A fat pheasant strolls past the window, having gorged on the breadcrumbs scattered across the drive. The smaller birds cling on to the nut dispensers, pecking away at the food inside.

The rosiness is going but the stillness remains, the stillness of a wintry morn. 

Inside, the bunch of greens which so resembled spring onions yesterday are beginning to turn towards the light and open in the warmth. Their warm yellow trumpets herald the approach of spring. Daffodils.

We were made to dwell in seasons. There is beauty in each season, only marred by our feeble attempts to delay the next one’s coming. Our lives are, themselves, a season, more closely resembling winter than summer. Perhaps the time of life we often call the autumn of our years is, in fact, the spring, and as we approach our end we resemble those greens which yesterday looked like spring onions, and today flower beautifully. 

The warmth and light of God’s presence teases out the beauty in each of us and its full flowering will come when we are finally Home.