God Will Make Your Life Blossom

On a recent afternoon of yard work, I asked my sons to prune a small tree on the edge of our driveway. New growth threatened to grow over the asphalt, and my sons, ever enthusiastic to use garden tools with blades, happily went to work. When their excitement for the task waned, they headed off to play some football, leaving a pile of branches in the middle of the driveway.

As I gathered the branches to bring to our firepit out back, I noticed many of them had new buds forming. Ever the teacher, I grabbed a couple and headed inside. Yard waste turned science lesson! Pulling a jar out of the cupboard, I set the branches in and filled the jar with water. We might not be able to affect the weather outside, but indoors we could make spring come just a little bit earlier. We’d force the branches to bloom.

I’ve always loved the process of forcing plants. There’s something fascinating and downright impish in tricking a plant to flower before its season. There are all kinds of tricks to the trade. A few drops of hydrogen peroxide in your pussy willow water. A small warming mat under your amaryllis bulbs. Whatever technique you might use, the effect is still the same. Beauty in a season when you do not expect it. Blooming in a fallow time.

After loss, you can blossom in the same miraculous way that green leaves sprout on the bare branches in the jar beside my window. Your person’s death cut you off from the life you’d known before. You often feel like a pile of castaway sticks, severed from vitality. But in his merciful kindness, God preserves you. His gracious hand picks you up and places you in a new and unfamiliar, uncomfortable environment—a life post-loss. He generously provides the resources you need to keep surviving.

Grief forces each of us to bloom in ways we never imagined. If the rhythms of nature are to be trusted, our new lives, even in the midst of grief, will someday become things of beauty. God’s horticultural speciality is growing beautiful things in difficult circumstances. In this season of grief, may God grow something beautiful from your life.