Winter is Over
Have you ever smelt a Hyacinth? The flowers are packed with every wonderful scent of spring and the purple ones I had were so vibrant they filled my entire living room! Every time I came home I would smile as I deeply inhaled the aroma permeating my house. Those flowers screamed "Welcome Home" and then two weeks after, they started to die! Just like that. I struggled. Did they not have enough light? Did they not have enough water? Oh, no, the leaves are burning, they have too much light. Is that root rot? Yeah, the struggle was real and eventually I lost her. It annoys me how plants thrive outside but then feign frailty when they are in my apartment…a tale to be told another day.
Anyway, the pot remained on my window sill for 6 months. That's what she gets for dying on me like that. One evening in September a thought dropped in my heart: "try replanting the bulbs." I laughed but decided to anyway. The soil was so dry that it was now hard and I had to soak it in water to get the bulbs out intact. They looked like dry onions. The interwebs said to place hyacinth bulbs in a cold dark place because they needed to grow slowly and not bloom in winter. Spring was their time and it was only September so I put them by my air conditioner, kept those window blinds closed and watered them frequently.
Okay, let me just stop to say that watering what you think is dead and expecting something to happen sounds...crazy. I don't know what I was expecting to happen but I've seen crazy things happen in life so I thought why not? What do I have to lose?
Well...look at my Hyacinth bulbs only a 2 months after...started from the bottom now we're here!
I thought those bulbs were dead and had ignored them for 6 months. They should have been thrown out but I couldn't be bothered. What I didn't realize is that they still had so much life in them just waiting for the right environment to flourish. Those 6 months, my bulbs were just dormant, not dead.
How many of us have thrown something away because it's not working or appears dead? A project? A dream? A relationship? A friend? Yeah, we're quick to toss them out because "ain't nobody got time for that" right? But God doesn't do that to us. He knows and can see the potential we have that others don't. So he creates the right environment for us and then plants us there. Lo and behold, we sprout and grow. What life was hidden begins to emerge. We become rooted in community. We step out of the dark and into the light. We grow. We spring forth. We rise!
So this year I challenge you to rise! Rise from the darkness and prostrated position that life circumstances have kept you. Rise to a new life that's been in you all along.
““Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive and know it and will you not give heed to it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
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