Blooming in the snow

We’ve had a long, cold winter in northern Indiana this year. Folks have been grousing about it forever. It even snowed on April 14, and how unfair is that?

But way back on March 25 I looked out my window toward the back of a neighbor’s house and saw these forsythia bushes in full bloom. In the snow. The forsythia we have wasn’t even showing signs of life (and even now hasn’t yet bloomed). The crocus hadn’t come up. Nothing else was looking springy.

They seemed to be saying that their contract stipulated that they were to come out at the end of March, so there they were, as promised. What everybody else was doing was unimportant. The weather was irrelevant.  They had their calling. This is what they were created to do, and they were faithful.

It didn’t even matter that as far as they could know, nobody would see them. The man who rents the house doesn’t get out into the back yard. Except for me, the nosy neighbor, nobody would care if they bloomed or not. But I got the idea that they had bloomed just for me. They were my encouragement that spring was coming, a bit of color in the black and white world.

They were also my encouragement to get on with what I was called to do. Even though I would be the odd-ball doing something weird. Even though the “time was not right”. Even if nobody much cared whether I did it or not or even noticed. It might encourage someone, who knows? Or I could just get the satisfaction of being myself.

What have you been created for? What are you called to do? Are you doing it?

Maybe the climate isn’t right. Maybe you’re the only one who would be doing it. Maybe nobody would notice if you did. What if none of that was important? What if you were true to yourself?

What if you were the encouragement someone needed to keep them going?

Would it be worth it to bloom in the snow?