Advent Journey Day 16

I truly love Christmas flowers.  They are hearty for they can endure cold temperatures.  And they change, right before your very eyes.  When you first buy hyacinth or amaryllis, they are mere stems shooting up out of dirt.  But over time, something happens and they begin to open up into beautiful, fragrant flowers that grace the Christmas atmosphere.  I love having them around the house and always look forward to watching their progress.  The hyacinth all up and out now, spilling their fragrance all the house.  The amaryllis flower is finally beginning to make it's way into the world.  We received this back on Thanksgiving and have been waiting for it to bloom ever since!  The stalk went up quite tall before the flower began to show its head.

 I love the winter flowers.  They are hearty and they take a little time to flower and bloom.  But then once they do, they last for quite a long time.  Life requires heartiness at times.  We must hang in there when the flower of our lives is absent, knowing that someday, the bloom will appear.  We've been waiting now in Advent for 3 Sundays.  One more Sunday and just a couple of more days until Christmas eve.  The beauty of Christmas awaits us if we can endure the times when our lives are not bright with beautiful blooms.  But just as God is at work in the soil of these flowers, so it's true that He's at work in our lives...cultivating, readying, preparing us...for whatever beauty he will bring next.  May our waiting be marked by hope because of God's amazing work...however out of sight it may feel to you just now.