HAPPY MONDAY!
My lovely wife—and the weather—inspired today’s word-of-the-week…
Resilient
Last week Becky was finally able to put out her normal array of flowers. Usually that happens earlier, but we’ve had an odd spring.
Since I’ve been trapped in bed, she placed an especially beautiful hanging basket right where I could see it. Yellow, red, orange, green—the room brightened each time I glanced at it.
Then the hail came. We get early summer hailstorms in Colorado that strips paint and damages tough, “weatherproof” roof shingles. Contractors will be busy replacing and repairing for a few weeks.
Fragile flowers and hailstones—it wasn’t much of a contest. All of those plants, so meticulously placed just days earlier, lay battered and seemingly lifeless, colored petals strewn around the yard.
And that gorgeous hanging basket got the worst of the storm. Completely exposed, swinging in the violent wind, it was reduced to a mass of tangled stems. The poor thing looked like it had received a really bad haircut—you almost felt embarrassed for it as it, hanging there naked and exposed.
Dead.
Four days later—the yellow and orange and red are brighter than ever, along with some purple I didn’t notice before. The shingles and paint still wait for repair, but that poor, “dead” plant is bigger and more beautiful.
We surveyed the damage to Becky’s flowers after the storm, convinced that she’d have to replace them. In our minds it was a total loss.
Life’s like that a lot. Like those seemingly fragile flowers, we bounce back in amazing and unexpected ways from apparent devastation.
We forget too easily that God is all about Hope. He designed us to be resilient.
Is there some part of your life in which you need to trust God for resilience?
Have a great week!