Gourmet Day

DAFFODILS:BRAVE OR IMPATIENT?

Spring is an exciting time around the farm. I’m buying calves, ordering baby chicks. Seed magazines liter the coffee table. Occasional warm days set birds to song, bees to work, and trees to bud.

My wife and I were enjoying a cup of coffee yesterday when she looked out the window and commented, “Look at how early the flowers come out. ‘They’re so…” She searched for the word. “They’re so brave.”

“Impatient.” That’s how I was about to complete her sentence. “They’re so impatient.” Shucks, the little rascals are suffering--like the rest of us-- from cabin fever!

Poets have long euphemized winter as death and spring as life. Maybe that’s why daffodils are overly zealous; they’re eager for life. Perhaps that’s why they bravely risk everything against the hope of spring’s coming. That’s why I live as I do.

Because I believe in Jesus’ coming and a new life, I sometimes find myself at odds with the dying system around me. Living this way can be risky business: Martyrs, for example! Like yellow daffodils in a gray world, living in anticipation of eternity is noticed. People misunderstand. Jesus said, “The world will not know you, it didn’t know me.”

Is such living “bravery”? No. For myself, honestly, I’m not a risk taker; I’m a risk avoider. In spite of possible late freezes, daffodils aren’t risk takers; neither are they brave. They’re just anxious to live and they’re exuberance is rooted in a solid assurance: Spring is coming. Jesus is too.

Winter is passing. Spring is coming. Live bravely, with impatience for “…these light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”