It was a blustery day. Windy and wet! I needed a walk anyway and took my camera just in case there was anything worth a picture on such a gray and unpropitious day…
Wet roads. No trails today. Not in the mood for slip-slopping over mud and slick tree roots…
No’body’ wanted to stand still for a picture…poor little clover, all alone in the ditch and tempest-tossed…
And I didn’t want to stand still to find a good picture either! So I put in my time and hustled home…deciding at the last minute to take a quick tour of my own backyard in search of a little bright something…
The red currant bush was holding out with fortitude despite the wind and weather…
But not much else to note…rotten pumpkins sagging in the way only a pumpkin knows how… sodden garden waste catching rain…cernuous last remains of once-brilliant painted daisies their heads now drooping toward earth…You get the picture. It’s wet. It’s gloomy. Better times have been but for now are past…
Then I poked my head in the greenhouse. It’s just a homemade affair framed roughly with saplings and now-flapping plastic, but it keeps the weather mostly out. And in this quiet out-of-the-wind spot I found a little radiance.
This little bush of a marigold, a misfit among tomatoes and peppers all summer long, just keeps on blooming her heart out in here, oblivious to wind and weather.
And just across from her a vagrant calendula has found a place to bloom for all he’s worth and chase the blues away. Defying winter’s approach he blazes with the beauty of a summer’s day! And I am reminded, it is possible to rejoice, no matter what, when my refuge is with the Unchanging One.
“…for you are my safe refuge, a fortress where my enemies cannot reach me.”
“Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings! Selah.”
Ps.61:3,4 NLT&ESV
–LS