My amaryllis bulb opened further last night. This is year two for that flower, I’ll have you know. Ha! And Jack always said I bring plants home to die. Not this time! When I went to open the blinds just now, there it was – unfolded nearly as open as it is going to get and with an extra blossom I don’t remember from last year.
Now, my children always said I think too hard about things like this, and who knows, they may be right. But that open flower did make me think.
I recalled its incremental move toward beauty. It has taken weeks, and it didn’t look like much for the longest time. But then, this morning, ta da! A quiet surprise of brilliant red, leaning toward the sun.
And I thought, that’s what happens in life and in our character, usually when we least expect it, and often out of dry conditions. As in weight training, where the aim is strength and tone and muscle, the goal is never achieved in a single session, or week, or even month. No, it’s only after we submit to the weight of the bar through repeated reps over many seasons, that we change and are developed.
Real beauty and strength can never be airbrushed on, nor sprinkled like fairy dust. No, they come from the inside out and involve some measures of adversity, fatigue and sweat, teachability, dry soil, stretches of time, willingness to go the distance.
And the waiting prize is waking up to beauty that was once not thought possible.
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
– Ecclesiastes 3:11