This week on the Raised Catholic podcast, we’re using the metaphor of a new and mostly-green tulip field to represent all of the good things we plant: our dreams and relationships, vocations and prayers. We plant children and friendships and the work of our hands, and we tend all of these good things with a vision or a hope for what they will become in time.
A closed, green tulip blossom is a mystery. There are clues as to what each bloom will become, sure, in the flowers that are planted around each stem, the color that is starting to appear in the ones that maybe got a bit of a head start at blooming. We can believe that the things that are planted together in a row or a section will grow up uniformly in the same color and shape and size, but as anyone with siblings or who has parented siblings knows, the things that are planted all together frequently don’t bloom in all of the same ways. And thank God for that.
We’re a garden and the good things we plant are a garden, too. As I brought home the mostly green stems with the delight and excitement of watching them open and grow in my sunny kitchen, I realized a couple of things. One is that each tulip in the pitcher, green as it may be, already is. It exists and it is real. What it would become was something that I could not yet fully guess, but I could trust that the bloom would open and grow because that is what tulips are made to do. Exactly how or when they would ‘appear’ and ‘become’ and open and bloom is something that I could not yet know.
1John 3:2-3 says it this way:
“Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
What we are? God’s children.
What we will become? Sky’s the limit, friend. Let’s watch and see what unfolds.
Listen to Raised Catholic episode 174: What We Will Become on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts (or read the transcript), and then let’s meet back here in the comments to chat about what things you’ve planted as we await the good growth to come.