What is holding us

and what will be revealed

Each spring, I trim branches from the bushes in the yard and I bring them inside in pitchers full of water to watch them open and become what they already are. First the forsythia burst bright yellow in my kitchen and then I’ll bring in the azalea and the dogwood blooms. As these plants all take on their summer green, I bring in the rhododendron branches last, and these purple beauties teach the biggest lesson of them all.

Because all of these spring flowers become – the azalea and the dogwood – they all unfold in time, but the purple rhododendron blooms have a slightly different process. The blooms are held in place by these green-yellow sticky leaves called sepals (the word is taken from the Greek word for ‘covering’), which protect the closed buds until they are ready to open. Together the sepals form what’s called a calyx, a word whose Latin root means ‘to hide’. As the sepals open, the closed buds shoot up and out, and when they’re no longer needed, the sepals fall. On each rhododendron flower, some buds open days before others and this kind of lopsidedness or unpredictability of the whole bloom makes them fascinating to watch, at least to me.

In these days in which many of us are working hard to hold our hope, it can be challenging to see the imperceptibly slow and quiet shifts that may indicate the Hand of God at work in our world, but there’s evidence everywhere we look. The force of gentle goodness and the consistent quiet of time are deceptively strong movers if we’ll have eyes to see. After all, it’s a flimsy blossom that pushes away a sticky sepal. It’s a quiet lapping wave that moves the shoreline. It’s the work of the smallest bee that makes any harvest possible. We can’t track it and we don’t always see its progress, God knows, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening in a way that we will one day identify.

In the same way as those rhododendron blooms, our church, our country and our world, our families and our very selves are being held by a force which holds, protects, and hides us. In time, we have everything it takes within us to blossom and bear witness to the goodness that’s been placed within us. As protections fall away and we are revealed to the world in all our colors, what story will our blooming tell? Will we reveal the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? Will our lives be a testament to the quiet strength of Who has held us all along?

Day by day as some things fall and other things blossom, let’s listen and feel for the quiet strength that’s always moving us forward, and always making all things new.

Let’s read together:

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

“What are we doing here?” Friend, let’s pray on the answer to that question this week. See you in the comments :) .