Be Still

I am delighting in the beauty and colour emerging all around me these days.  There is such an abundance of life everywhere.  I have not forgotten that just a few short weeks ago those same trees so beautifully decked out in fullness of colour and life today were bare and appeared lifeless for so many months in the cold and dark.

So often I feel that expression of life is completely up to me.  I worry and fret and take on responsibility for emerging beauty and joy.  I become tangled and frustrated inside when things do not happen as I hope.

I want to learn from these trees around me today.  They really did not actively do anything for the flowers so abundant now to emerge other than continue to be rooted and to feed on the firm soil in which they are planted.  They have opened their branches to the sun around them.  They rested in the dark days and did not allow themselves to be cut down when there was no sign of life.  The flowers emerged as part of their very being.

These trees remind me to not loose hope in those dark days.  I want to increasingly be still and rest in the unknown mystery of the soil of God where I have been planted.  I may not ever be a brilliant flowering cherry tree, but I am the tree I am meant to be, and in the right time those leaves will come forth as part of who I am.  Even while others flower I may still appear lifeless.  I planned my garden so that each season would bring forth its own beauty.  Even in the winter the paperbark maple by my kitchen window was planted with great joy and expectation of enjoyment of its creative and beautiful bark alone through those winter months.  The evergreen trees are not flashy, but give strength and solid colour and grounding steadily all year.

Together may we all rest in the unique beauty  of our own selves.  May we not despair and give up hope through the dark days, but thankfully be still and content in the special gift of our own being.