Of Dandelions and Daffodils

 No color speaks the coming of spring more that bright yellow - the color of daffodils or dandelions.  A couple of weeks ago, as I stood out on the playground monitoring Teacher Directed Physical Education (recess preceded by a walk around the track), a little girl brought a bright yellow blooming dandelion up to me.  This Minnesota girl was in shock - a dandelion in winter?  That warmed my heart as much as the sunshine warmed my skin. The "miracle" was duly noted and relegated to the back burner.

However, a few days later when visiting an antebellum mansion in Roswell, we observed daffodils, in bud, in bloom, and past bloom.  Again the sunny yellow cheered the heart and soul.  Thoughts of those two flowers have been an almost daily remembrance.  "Object lessons" fluttered through my head landing and flitting away.

By most standards, the daffodil is the more beautiful flower with it's trumpet surrounded by fragile petals proclaiming the coming spring.  But it is a fragile flower.  I planted many daffodils in my flower beds in Hutchinson and only occasionally did they dance in the spring breeze.  Sometimes the leaves would poke through the soil too early, only to be frozen off or covered by a late spring snow.  Some of the bulbs became winter food for squirrels and other varmints.  Other times the leaves grew full and green, but no bud appeared.

I planted no dandelion seeds in my garden or yard, yet every year some bloomed in unwelcome locations.  In fact, it was my goal to eradicate them.  I had some success, but there was always a dandelion to be found by a granddaughter or friend.  What mom has not treasured that sweet gift of the dandelion bouquet picked especially for mom by a child, innocent of the dandelions' noxious reputation.  Few are the moms who did not take at least the first bright bouquet into the house and add it to a little jar of water.

There are lessons about life and faith in the flowers - and in those stories either the dandelion or the daffodil can be the symbol of the positive or the negative.  The daffodil springs up beautiful, but is fragile and dies quickly.  The dandelion is hardy and spreads its "love" near and far.  The dandelion is a weed and will destroy the beauty of a yard or the production of a garden.  The daffodil stands tall and shows its beauty to all who come by.

Perhaps if Jesus had been giving the Sermon on the Mount from one of the many hills that comprise this part of Georgia He would have used the dandelion or daffodil in the following verse, part of a passage encouraging us not to be concerned or worries. From Matthew 6:28-30:

"So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 

What is your lesson from the dandelion or the daffodil?