Earlier this week, I took a picture of some small purple flowers that had sprung up in the sunlit areas outside of the church. One picture was of a weed, with a very pretty flower, the other was of a crocus. It filled my heart with joy to see this bit of purple amongst all the winter brown.
Today we are having a spring snowstorm. No it is not particularly cold. No it is not sticking to the roads. Yes it will be gone tomorrow when the temperatures are supposed to hit 15C or so (it is Alberta, it is April so it is not that unusual). However a blanket of white covers those tiny purple blossoms that lifted my heart a few days earlier.
A blanket of white covers the ground. The ground is covered like it was in December, January and February. However there is one difference this time. When the snow goes tomorrow, the purple blossoms will again, after a bit of drying off and warming up, show their colours amongst the brown earth and grass. A short re-visit of winter will not contain them; somehow these blossoms will live.
This tenacity always amazes me. Even though for a short time winter seems to win, the spring flowers will win out. As the weather warms up even more flowers will join the harmony of colours. Oh sure if a bitter frost comes along, these flowers will die. Soon afterwards though, flowers will come to replace the ones that die.
The flowers seem to give us a good lesson in life. In life, there are times when we need to push through barriers that we face, even when we are not quite ready. We need to put ourselves forward, risk failure, and hope for the best. We will face times of great adversity. Like the snow that covers the blossoms today, we will face times when we need help and when we seem pushed to the brink. These difficult times make us stronger and prepare us to face other challenges. Like the blossoms who die because they could not deal with the killing frost, there are sometimes we might fail. We tried too soon, we were not prepared, and we were not up for the challenge. However, like the replacement flowers that take the dead blossoms place, we can rest assured that there will be other flowers to take our place. Our dream and our work will not have been in vain. For the flowers that survive the early spring snows, we learn from our resilience, and grow stronger. So the flowers teach us much about life. Blessings.