Today was the spectacular “Allium Schubertii” bloom, yesterday was the luscious red peony “Scarlett O’Hara.” Each new day in May will hold a new present to open, a new bloom that we haven’t seen yet this year or even at all.
This week the fragrant red and white “Scentimental” rose bloomed for the first time this year. It has been in the garden probably a dozen years, but it’s always such a thrill to see it start blooming! I’ve always said that going into the garden and finding something different is like Christmas morning.
Truly, all the natural beauty God brings us is a gift, whether new and exciting or old and familiarly comforting.
Mothers around the world know what I’m talking about when I say I love my plant babies or am eagerly anticipating the arrival of a first bloom. We have felt the same — only more so — as we watch our dear children grow and bloom.
The milestones they pass along the way are probably more poignant to us as they are to them, no doubt. Their lives are etched in our own hearts with less disdain for the past than what they feel. Teenage angst has no recollection of adorably mispronounced words or chubby cheeks or dipped smiles.
Aren’t they just in such a hurry to grow up? And we as parents are in no such hurry. We savor the sweet moments as if we were opening another gift. Those other moments? Well, think of them as those annoying packing peanuts that cling to everything and never quite go away. They aren’t part of the real gift! Remember that! But it is all quite literally “part of the package.”
Mary, the mother of Jesus, certainly was no different. Yes, she had more significant milestones to watch, and events that would unfold with the sole purpose of the salvation of all who believe on her son.
“But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19, NASB).
What is a mother’s heart for, but to be a treasure box of precious memories? We won’t fill it with the packing peanuts, any more than I would purposely fill my flower beds with the weeds. There are plenty there anyway, I assure you. The inevitable sorrows that we also face are part of the package, but they are not to be transferred to the “treasure box,” your own heart.
If you are a mother, open that treasure box of memories. If not, know that your mother had such a box with your name on it hidden in her heart.
More importantly, God the Father is more than capable of loving you as a mother would. He chooses the tenderest of relationships to describe His love and care for us.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child
And have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).