Outside my window trees are in bloom. Being under the canopy of blooming trees is like stepping into a magical land of snowy petal embellished dark grey branches. White feathers held high in the sky as if to embrace the divine throne. Snowlike clusters ornating awakening trees in the lukewarm, opened sky. Scenes from once snow-covered Narnian trees now redecorated with white blooms in the Spring. When the breeze sifts through the branches, a swaying frenzy of white florets begin their dance all the way down. I watch mesmerized as they descend from their once high position to the ground. Lost in the candor of this dance in the wind, I’m struck by the bluntness of this one truth: in all their beauty and majesty, even blooming flowers die.
Today I stand under the shedding trees in the Spring, and I watch life draining yet again from the blooming tree. I am grieved and joyful, both emotions in complete harmony in my soul. I understand that dying is the evidence of living. But even more beautiful is the living that comes after dying. From outside my window, I am but a spectator to the annual process of Spring. I understand that in order for the fruitful greenness to take over the tree, blooms must die. There is a cost to fruitfulness even in nature. Each tree has a price to pay in order to live, and the beautiful petals from the trees in my yard must die to let the leaves be birthed.
Not too long ago, I stood beside a hospital bed and watched my beautiful sister fall gracefully into the ground. Like the blooming flowers on the Spring trees, she danced graciously her youthful way underneath the ground. I stood in awe as she was taken from the height of her life. Rooted in love and faith, blooming in the cluster of her family, and dressed in feminine stamina, she gently sifted, swayed, and rested six feet under. I moved from the bedside to the grave, struck at the way she lived through her dying. The presence of the Spirit, the divine hands of our Maker, the enlarged heart of our Gardener—all present in her dying, not as helpless spectators like me, but as greeters into her eternal home. Her blooming was not wasted: she died into her eternal living.
The simple cyclical turn of seasons on this earth are merciful reminders of Heaven awaiting dying flowers. Every blooming flower needs to die in order to truly live. Death is sure to come. One day we will sway and descend from the comfort of our branches into the coldness of the dust. Those in Christ will rest our flesh with other dried bones but our death is sure to bring us into the presence of Life. Our dying on earth is our eternal Spring in Heaven. Never again swaying away from our Tree of Life. Always in the presence of the glorious clusters of brothers and sisters. Warmed by the Eternal Son, fixed in the assurance of an eternal living. As I admire the blooms on my trees, I am struck by the reality that I am not just as a mere spectator to the changes of the seasons: I am yet another dying bloom in the cluster.
ancamartin 