By Ed Thompson

A recent blog post by Cameron Trimble got me to thinking about daffodils. I am not really a flower person, but I do love daffodils. When they are sitting in a vase indoors, I can take them or leave them – and mostly I would just as soon leave them since they will eventually wilt or fade and have to be thrown away, which just seems like work that could be avoided.

Outdoors, however, I love to see them bloom. They are a sure sign of spring, much better than robins. They seem to pop up out of nowhere, blasting their brilliant yellow flowers in the woods, on the hillsides, by the side of the road. A few seem intentionally placed by a mailbox or by the side of a home. More often, though, they just seem to show up by happenstance – unexpected signs of beauty. 

In that way, they remind me of God’s love. There’s an extravagance to God, an abundance that seems so striking and yet so surprising. God often shows up in our lives like that, overwhelming us with joy.

As the blog post suggests, however, daffodils are foolish. They show up when they’re ready, on their own schedule, pushing up through the ground, bursting into bloom it seems regardless of the temperature. I can remember a few times seeing daffodils bloom at the end of February, only to be covered by snow a few days later. If they had just waited a week or so, they could have avoided that disaster.

As Paul points out in the opening chapters of 1st Corinthians, however, there is a foolishness to God too. God operates on God’s own time and in God’s own way.  That can make us grumpy because God often seems to bless people that don’t deserve it. (Although, if we think about it, we don’t deserve God’s blessings either.)  In our pride, I suppose, we think we could do things more fairly. God, however, doesn’t do things fairly. God operates by grace. If God only did things fairly, there would be fewer daffodils. They would be more neatly arranged, and they wouldn’t be spread so wildly through the woods and on the hillsides.

While I love the smell of Easter lilies – and one of the things I miss about being a pastor is walking into the sanctuary early on Easter morning and almost being knocked over by the fragrance of the lilies – maybe the daffodil would be a better choice for decorating our churches. But maybe it’s better to keep them outdoors. I don’t blame people for planting daffodils in flower beds and even in flower pots because they are beautiful. However, when I see their blazing yellow blooms scattered randomly, haphazardly, it makes me smile. It lets me know spring is surely coming. Maybe the temperatures will still drop below freezing, maybe it will still snow, but daffodils display a persistence, a resilience that give me hope that better days are coming. They point to the God who is at work to bless us even before we ask.