Daffodil Bulbs Are Ugly Things

Have you ever noticed how ugly daffodil bulbs are? I planted about thirty yesterday. Every single one looked dried out and ready for the trash can. Even the root system looked like something I'd sweep into a dustpan. It's hard to believe that I will have any green shoots in the spring. It's even harder to believe that those green shoots will reach up to touch the sunlight of those first warm days of spring and unfold into little yellow cups and saucers.


There are days when I feel more like a daffodil bulb than a daffodil flower. There are days when my best efforts look like something God might sweep up with a broom and dustpan and toss in the trash.

But God is the ultimate gardener. He sees the potential in every life. He knows that, down deep inside, there is a flower just waiting to emerge. He knows that the attention He gives us now - on a cool November afternoon when the hours of daylight are dwindling - that attention will yield something beautiful when the Light of the Son touches us.


I'm ready to be a daffodil. I'm ready to break out of the bulb. I'm tired of being dormant. Of waiting.


But I am not in charge of timing. That's God's business. I am only called to submit to the Gardener's hands, to accept the soil that covers me and teaches me a lesson in humility and patience, and then to awaken with the first rays of springtime.


In that moment, it will be difficult to remember the cold of November, the bleak days of December, the relentless snows of January, and the lingering remnants of February's winter.


Then, God willing, I will flower.


All the potential that He has placed within me will be actualized. And my greatest hope, my deepest longing, that thing that drives me some days and quiets me other days, that one thing I long to do . . . to cause someone to pause as Wordsworth did and acknowledge the Creator through the simple gift of the created . . . that will happen! I leave you with Wordsworth's poem, one of my favorites.



I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.