FADED FLOWERS

Recently I came across some faded flowers or what some would consider flowers past their prime. By themselves the words would seem to tell tales of lack of attraction, but the more I saw of those flowers whose blooms had lost their luster, the more beauty I saw in each one.
Dandelions came before spring to our West Texas yard brightening the drab gray-brown grasses with brilliant bits of leafy green topped with bright, well, dandelion yellow blossoms. I have always liked bright yellow. I have yet to live down the fact that there was a time in my life when it was such a favorite color I somehow talked my husband into helping me paint three of four of our living room walls a muted shade of that color. And, it was off-set on the fourth wall by a soft yellow background wallpaper filled with a Jacobean design of loden green leaves and muted red flowers. A few years prior to that I had crocheted a dandelion yellow cape for our pre-teen, dark-haired, deep brown-eyed daughter and when a dear friend saw it, he asked her, “Couldn’t your mother find yellow?” Wherever it is these thirty-some years later, I suspect the yellow of that yarn hasn’t faded one iota, but the yellow of the back yard dandelions left almost as quickly as they came. One day they were there and then the rains came. As I went to the back yard one morning, there were some dandelions with a few remaining bits of dandelion dust stuck here and there but what really got my attention was the leftover symmetry of basic beauty that held what had once been a dandelion flower. That morning as I stood in the rain-dampened grass, I discovered a tiny green, many-pointed star-shaped flower base of gorgeous green, not the deep green of dandelion leaves, but almost a light neon green that said, “Look at me! Aren’t I beautiful, too?” It didn’t take me long to get my camera to take a picture of its beauty. Finally, many shots later, I was satisfied. I even found the perfect Bible verse to go with it! “The flower falls off; but the Word of the Lord abides forever.” (I Peter 1: 24b-25)
Is it possible that we look at God’s Word like I first did at the dandelion dust on the faded flowers, thinking, “Oh, I’ve seen it all before” until I looked a little closer and found that bit of beauty that was right in plain sight? Yes, the flower does fall off, but His Word abides forever; a flower that never fades, but with closer inspection becomes more beautiful.
© Marilyn Sue (Libby) Moore 3-29-2010