Last week, a curious thing grew outside amidst the fresh frost of my New England October. A single, perfectly formed pink rose bud appeared on one of my bushes –an unlikely occurrence in the garden as everything else dies back.
Not wanting to miss the promise of unfolding beauty to come, I found my clippers and promptly cut the single stem rose.
The rose, now in a bud vase, graced my workspace all week… it’s beauty and fragrance delighting and refreshing me. And I’ve really needed that. For, lately, I’ve suffered a few personal setbacks to my health and my work. That does not make me unique; we all have times of trial and discouragement. But it does proves to me that, in God’s economy, our hearts can respond to the even the smallest spark, enkindling tangible hope as we grope and struggle with confusion or challenges.
More real than the beauty of a rose bloom in the chill of autumn, the action of grace often lies just beneath the surface of what is usually distracting us at the moment. But to see it, we must call upon the promises of our baptism, an event long past for many of us, that carries ramifications for our present day.
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Vaclav Havel, a Czech writer, on the subject of hope:
ReplyDelete"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
Substitute faith for certainty. Or maybe not. Perhaps it is certainty after all. That rose is bigger than a rainbow.