Gifts With Staying Power

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” -- Mark 4:26

“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.” – 1 Corinthians 15:36-38

We try so hard to please each other. On the morning of Good Friday I was ready to call my son-in-law Mike to ask him to order an Easter corsage for my spouse, Barbara. We had about a six and half hour trip to their home near Boston that afternoon and there would be no way I could purchase flowers locally that would last. But alas, that morning while we will still in the bedroom, my wife Barbara exited her closet with a flower box and, upon opening it, brought out a white artificial corsage. Suddenly I remembered the conversation I had with our florist the last time we spent Easter with our children in Boston, when I was trying to solve the problem of time, distance and wilting flowers. The florist suggested she could do something lovely in silk. I loved the creativity. So on that particular Easter Sunday I handed my beloved a corsage of white orchids, ready for the wearing. And now a year (or Is it two years?) later, she pulled the corsage out of the closet as the gift that keeps on giving. She held it up to herself, smiling at me. How could I have forgotten such a priceless thing?

Easter Sunday morning Barbara donned the corsage, but somehow had lost the pin that came with it. She tried to use a straightened paper clip, which seemed satisfactory on one hand and tacky on the other; but perhaps not as tacky as wearing the flower from a previous year to greet the risen Lord – the lifeless greeting new life; the dead greeting the living!

She’d removed the corsage from her dress while riding in the car to the church, I suppose so as not to damage the silk flowers. So as I took my sports jacket from the car, she lifted the corsage out of the trunk too. She looked at it, and then gently placed it back in the car. “Corsages are kind of passé,” she said to me. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but if you look around you at church, you won’t find many women wearing them anymore.”

She was right. I didn’t see a corsage in church that morning, and certainly not one that had seen the light of Easter dawn in an earlier year.

It was a glorious Easter morning, cold and crisp with blue sky and white clouds outside, with wonderful music, and pastoral reflections, communion and prayers within. The pastor spoke about the impact of the resurrection on the disciples, on their lives and the way faith increased in them and beyond them testifying to the reality of God’s presence which they had experienced and which had sustained them vitally even when Jesus was no more walking physically among them. That is the Easter gift that lasts, that makes it clear to us even now that something awesome happened on that day when that One sacrificial life in God was victorious in the face of death.

On the back wall of the chancel in the church during the worship service were the freshness and beauty of lighted candles and tall lilies. The fire and light from the candles were real. I assumed that the lilies were fresh rather than artificial. I didn’t ask, however. And I don’t think I will.

I know seeds of every kind, including some flowers, die and then spring to life in a way I can’t understand. It’s astounding; astonishing; awesome. The living truth in those flowers has staying power.