Christmas Wildflowers

 

I’m soaking a Christmas card from Gary and Louise. The paper is speckled, and small print on the reverse advises that if one soaks it for 24 hours and then plants it in a pot, wild flowers will spring up.

Had we not saved the cards to revisit them at a time calmer than the pre-Christmas rush, we’d not have realised that their card was more than cardboard. I wonder how many of the cards they sent were discarded in the recycling? Maybe some are blooming in landfills.

How often do we miss the wildflowers, because we are in too great a rush to do this or that? There is something particularly special about wildflowers. For a sporadic gardener like me, I think it’s the fact that nature does the work rather than me.

I love the tangential thoughts that come from this Christmas card impregnated with flower seeds: Jesus was sent as a baby, planted into the world, and though he was steeped in and saturated by the cruelty of powerful humans, he grew into a man pure and perfect, fragrant and beautiful. He brought – he brings – light and life. Sown by the divine gardener, he grew amongst us, full of grace and truth.

Oh, how we need him now! And he is here. We see him blooming in the lives of those cowering in cellars of fear and danger in Ukraine, where believers cling to him through faith and his word. We smell his fragrance in the lives of the persecuted, whose eyes glow with love for the very real saviour who never left nor forsook them during times of trial and tribulation. We see him in the lives of those stricken with disease and living with pain.

The wildflowers of God, sown with love and sacrifice. ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’

May he bloom in you and me today. Maranatha.