I love flowers.
When we moved to our current home, it had previously been a rental. The yard and garden had not been maintained well. Now, while I appreciate beautiful gardens, greenery and flowers, I am by no means a green thumb. Thankfully, my husband is. He has worked tirelessly over the two and a half years we've been here to transform weeds into a thriving lawn, out-of-control hedges into neat, well-kept boundaries and overgrown gardens into a peaceful backyard oasis.
One change we made was to plant a magnolia 'Teddy Bear' in the centre of our front lawn. It seemed to take forever to grow even a few centimetres. As we walked around our neighbourhood, we saw many magnolias in full, majestic bloom, and we despaired. Would our magnolia ever flower?
Then last year, just before Christmas, our beautiful little magnolia tree flowered. Just one flower. Right at the very top. To me, it looked like a Christmas tree with an angel flower at the top. Sadly, the flower only lasted a few days. A couple more flowers grew later, but they, too, only lasted a few days.
This week, our magnolia tree once again bloomed with one single flower right at the top. Knowing it would not be there long, I quickly snapped a photo of it (hilariously holding my phone over my head, way above my line of sight, so I am amazed the photo turned out as well as it did!). Even as I write this, the flower has browned and wilted.
This time, the magnolia flower reminded me of how small and insignificant we are in the whole scheme of life. Even if you think about this very moment, a quick internet search reveals there are currently over 8.3 billion people in the world. That's a lot of people! But when you factor in thousands of years of human population, I feel incredibly small. And that's only thinking about the human population. But Earth is just one planet, in one galaxy...
Even though we are but a speck, and our life here on earth is fleeting, our great God, the Creator, author and perfecter of everything, loves us.
The Bible tells us, in 1 Peter 1:18-25, just how precious each of us is to him:
18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.
21 Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.
22 You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.
23 For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. 24 As the Scriptures say,
“People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. 25 But the word of the Lord remains forever.”
And that word is the Good News that was preached to you.
I am so thankful that, as the magnolia flower reminds me, although life is fleeting, and we are just one of many billions of people, through Christ's sacrifice, our fleeting life is not the end. We have been gifted eternal life with Him. We don't have to earn it; all we have to do is believe and turn away from sin. Jesus has done the rest. Thank you, Jesus!