My Season

I sprouted my leaves one summer day,

Small ones, they were, in the month of May.

I watched the Oak tree, big and strong

Growing thousands of leaves all summer long.

Knock-out roses bore red blooms.

“Where is my color?” I sat and fumed.

Poppies, pansies, and petunias, too,

All stood out with colorful hue.

The season wore on with this color-filled scene,

But all I had to show was my same old green.

Fall came along , the oak leaves turned red.

My leaves just shriveled and fell off, quite dead.

Winter time came with the cold and the snow.

The ice was so heavy, we bent our heads low.

Finally temperatures warmed my cold heart.

I lifted my head. “I’ll make a new start!”

Now the oak stands strong, though a bare-looking fellow,

“But look at me; I’m blooming all yellow.”

“Of course you are,” said the Oak, “Don’t be so ‘pithia.’

It’s your season now, for you’re a Forsythia!”

Well, there you are, my little spring poem printed once again for you. I just love spring. I always look forward to the early spring flowers and flowering trees and bushes taking their turn to say, “Look at me. This is my season to shine. My color makes me stand out from the rest!”

Most of the time when everything is green in the summer or brown and bare in the winter, one bush or tree looks about like the next one. But come spring, each one has a time to be spotlighted.

It’s a little like our lives. We go along day after day doing our regular green routine or having the dull, gray doldrums. Perhaps our lives have been stark and eerie as those bare winter-time branches. We seem lifeless and dead.       

But we have hope because  God taught us every year that spring would come again. Sure enough, the nutrients are simply stored away in us. Hope comes to fruition with the sunshine and rain and the warming temperatures to form the first buds. We realize not only that we are alive, but we come alive with His goodness and grace. We, too, have a season to shine. Perhaps it is some major accomplishment or breakthrough in a challenge. 

The question I have for you is this; when you see that beautiful Forsythia blooming, do you glory in the bush or glory in the God who made it? Even the bush itself waves its flowery arms up to the Father. Jesus taught us,

“Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and [here it comes…] praise your Father in heaven.” Matt. 5:16

There’s the lesson for today—hope comes alive in us, others see the hope in our hearts through good deeds or missions accomplished, and the Father is praised because of it. May we have renewed energy and fresh hope as we move into this beautiful spring. Soon we will be able to “stop and smell the roses!”

~ Joyce ~