If you live where I live, you’re seeing everything in bloom.   In my tiny yard alone: forsythia, tulips, hosta, dogwood, phlox, azalea, and even dandelions. In my neighborhood, baby leaves are peeping out and growing more with each day, making a welcome canopy of sunlit apple green overhead. And everyone is smiling: all of this growth is a feast for the eyes and soul. Around here, we had a long, cold winter that didn’t end until well into April, but today it’s warm and there are flowers everywhere: on trees, in bushes, poking their sunny heads out of the dirt.  I shake my head in awe of it all, because they made it.  Each flower remembered how to grow and blossom. Even through brutal ice and cold and wind, they remembered. God is faithful and He put into them everything they needed to be sustained and even thrive. He did it. And each flower is a great reminder to me of the sovereignty, plan, and goodness of God: I did not have to do a thing.

I didn’t walk around my yard and tell each flower how to bloom. I didn’t have to whisper encouragements or sternly point my finger. I didn’t have to lay out a plan for them to follow. Truth be told, I wouldn’t even have known how to begin.  As a wise friend once said, you can’t make a flower grow by pulling on its stem. People are the same. We each have something inside of us that reaches for the sun and we bloom, thanks to be God. We bloom because that’s what we are made to do.

All of that blooming takes time and even struggle. People who know about these things say that the colder and snowier the winter, the brighter the flowers come springtime. It’s the same with us. We reach for the sun (Son) when we need it, and that warmth and grace triggers a reaction in us that we could never have planned or expected. Growth where it was barren. New life from death.

And I’m grateful. God made me a promise this winter that I would see His abundance this spring, and I do, and I am.  I’m taking it all in and smiling with appreciation and awe at how God works. He is an artist and He is good, and today, I see it all.  There is so much inside each one of us, just waiting to bloom.