While washing dishes a few days ago, I noticed a few leaves emerging
from the ground in a flowerbed just beyond the kitchen window. Strange to see
something out there this early in the year. Later, when I inspected, I found
the leaves were primroses I’d planted last year.
I’m prone to putting any
houseplant in the ground just to see what happens. It’s how I found out the amaryllis
I force into bloom at Christmas would bloom again later in the year when planted
outside.
Excited and surprised the primroses were making another
appearance, I noticed an article about them in the February Southern Living. I
read that primroses are annuals here in the South acting only as perennials on
the highest slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. But I live in the Piedmont,
nearly eighty miles from those elevations. Yet, there they were, primroses peaking
out through the Georgia red clay in my backyard as if that’s what they always
did.
I did a little
research and found that most varieties of primroses need cold temperatures to
make an encore appearance. Our unusually cold weather this year with night
after night of temperatures in the teens or single digits provided the environment
for the flowers to thrive.
“You’d think the cold weather would have the opposite
effect,” Jerry said when I told him about my discoveries.
You would. You’d think the bitter cold wind blowing against
that bed on the North side of the house, and the ground staying frozen for weeks
would serve to kill rather than enliven.
But this principle is something the apostle James
understood. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters whenever you face
trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces
perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work, so that you may be mature and
complete not lacking anything.”
It’s a truth Paul also
wrote about in Romans. “Not only so, but we
also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces
perseverance; perseverance,
character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been
poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
On those cold winter nights, when I sat on the sofa wearing
three layers, cocooned in a blanket listening to the windows rattle in the
cold wind, I couldn’t imagine that outside in the garden dirt, something
miraculous and wonderful was going on. Likewise, when the sufferer is suffering, it’s
hard to imagine God could shape anything good out of the heartache. But He can
and He does.
Now, I’m not a fan of suffering. If God had put me in
charge, I would’ve tried to find some way around it. But this I know, suffering
makes me run straight to God. I realize my need for Him in ways I don’t when
everything’s going my way.
The Psalmist wrote, “Give me a sign of your
goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me” (Psalm 86:17). The appearance of
the primrose in my garden feels like a sign of God’s goodness, a reminder of
His love despite a bunch of stuff not going the way I’d hoped.
So if life is going sideways for you, look
for the primroses, both the actual, and the metaphorical. It may feel like you’re
in the cold dirt, but have hope; God is at work to bring beauty.