“Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you.”

– Edward Payson Roe

Yesterday I talked about the way that birds illustrate Faith for us — the faith that if they land on a fragile branch and it doesn’t hold their weight, they will be able to fly when flying is needed.  Today I am thinking about flowers and hope.

Last Fall, long after the summer flowers that had brought color to my garden had faded and dropped their seeds, I decided to clean up the debris that had accumulated during the summer under our large “treehouse tree” in the backyard.  The kids gave this name to a sixty-foot arbor vitae that has stood at the rear of our lot for many more years that any of us has been alive.  From the outside, the tree looks dense and full.  Underneath, there is a clearing obscured by its branches that has served as a wonderland for our children and now our grandchildren for the twenty-five years we have lived in this house.  For ten of those years, a treehouse stood under the branches, built from the ground up and around the tree without a single nail touching the bark.  Many adventures were played out on the pallets that served as floors before time took its toll and we had to remove it.  For several years between generations, the tree sat undisturbed.  Then, last Fall, it became the shelter for a fairyland for the little girls who are the next generation to believe in their imaginations.

I began to rake leaves and to remove the forgotten pieces of toys from the space as I moved toward a fresh start.  In the midst of the brown leaves of our neighbor’s sycamore, I saw a tinge of purple.  Putting my rake aside, I used my hands to clear the leaves that nearly buried it and found this tiny, single violet.  He was standing there, all alone among the dead leaves, and blooming out of season.  It was such a surprise to find him there in November that I took his picture and added it to my album.  It isn’t that he was spectacular in his appearance.  It isn’t that I never had seen a violet before.  But the earth had turned from green to yellow to brown, and a glimpse of color was such a gift that this little fellow seemed somehow to deserve special attention. Soon after I finished my work and removed the mulch that had insulated him, the lone violet joined his brothers and sisters in the deep sleep of winter.

Flowers are like that.  They bloom for a season, and then they die.  It leaves us with a feeling of loss and sadness when the color fades to brown and we know that soon the brown will be covered by the white blanket of winter.  What the flowers teach us is hope.  By the time we have lived through several cycles of the seasons and paid attention to their patterns, we are able to say goodbye to the flowers and trust that their seeds have found the earth below them.  We find ourselves hoping and believing that when the winter snow has melted the earth will warm those seeds and bring the colors back to the newly-awakened world after its winter sleep.

I am thankful today for the flowers — the ones whose last blossoms struggle valiantly to hold autumn at bay, the ones whose stems have turned brown and whose dry seeds already lie in the soil above their roots, the sturdy mums who display their Fall colors as an example for the leaves that even now are turning from green to yellow on some of the trees.  In the midst of them all, I am thankful for one tiny violet who bloomed out of season and commanded my attention on a cold November day.  His message was Hope; and as I watch summer fade into fall, I am reminded to also carry the hope of spring.