Potential

After the coldest winter ever, I am thrilled by every sign that spring is coming.  For the last week I've noticed that something is happening with the Bradford Pear trees at our neighborhood entrance.  One day when I had a few extra minutes I stopped and pulled out the purse cam to check it out.

I was interested to see what was on the tree.  Instead of the buds I expected to see, there were tiny husks, rough with small bits of green inside.

A few days later I saw the little green balls more clearly.  I wondered how these could become the cloud of white snow that I knew would cover the pear trees within days.

Today I stopped and took a few more pictures.  First, one to show what happened to the green balls:

And then one to show what happens next:

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I have become convinced that there is a gospel analogy hiding for us behind many life situations.  I love the way these analogies can help abstract gospel principles become more concrete and understandable.

As I've thought about these different pictures today, I realized that this progression of pictures is really a perfect metaphor for human progression.

Sure, we know that we all progress.  We assume that we all will grow and learn, that we will blossom and develop from bud to flower, so to speak.

But the thing that I thought was fascinating about these flowers was to notice that in the beginning there was NO indication of what the finished product would be.  It wasn't that the first step along the way was a tiny flower and it progressed to be a big flower.  Instead, the first phase bore almost no resemblance to the final flower.

Isn't this reassuring?  To think that in the end, the Lord can make of us something so much more lovely than what we are today?  That even when we feel all brown and rough and without much beauty, we can still believe that as we let the Lord work in our lives, the result can be something we can't even imagine?

I like that thought...