There’s a magnolia tree right smack in the middle of our front yard. Once the long winter ended and spring decided to begin, we waited for the magnolia buds on this tree to start blossoming. Everything else around us was turning green, colour popping up everywhere, but this magnolia tree… it looked like it was in the dead of winter.
My sister in law looked at the buds one day and declared our tree what I had feared it was: dead. I was so sad. I kept expecting it to bloom because you could see the buds on the branches. But the buds were dried up, frail, easily broken. Every day I pull into our driveway I mourn this tree because I know the potential of it’s beauty.
Here is what a magnolia tree looks like when it’s in full bloom...
But then…Oh, guys! This may be the highlight of my entire week. My husband, my son and I were out on a walk this morning. As we walked back into our driveway I noticed this...
“Kevin! A blossom! A magnolia!” I was shocked and so thrilled. How did this happen? This tree was dead. All I could think of as soon as I saw that single magnolia was this: God brings dead things back to life. We all thought this tree was dead, but if there is life springing out of it then it is most certainly not dead.
I feel this tree's pain. It is working so hard to burst life out of those buds. Isn’t this just like us at times? Aren’t there things in our lives that we sometimes resign to being dead? Don’t we work so hard at times to bring those dead things back to life? And we forget…
We forget that the Creator of us is the creator of LIFE. Yes, death is imminent and it’s part of life here on earth. But, hear this… death is NOT the end of the story.
This is our Hope. Jesus came to die so that death would not be the end of the story. After Jesus died on the cross, the disciples and all who knew and loved and believed him… they were so confused. How could this be? Wasn’t He the one who came to save us? What are we supposed to do now? Without our leader, our teacher, our Lord?
3 days of excruciating waiting. And then… Jesus was raised back to life. He was raised back to life so that we could also be raised with him.
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:4)
God came to give us eternal life (1 John 5:7)… but he also came to give us abundant life (John 10:10). Abundant life doesn’t start in heaven. It actually starts here, on earth, as we live in communion with our Father through Jesus and the Holy Spirit works in us and through us.
So back to this magnolia tree. Even if this is the only beautiful magnolia that blossoms from this tree, I am going to bask in it’s beauty each time I look out my front window, remembering that God gives life to the dead and calls things that don’t exist into existence. (Romans 4:17)
There may be things in our lives that feel dead…a friendship, a marriage, dreams, goals, something in ourselves. It’s not our job alone to fix it. Just like there was nothing I could do for that tree but hope and wait. We simply let the life-giver breath life into whatever it is... and we hope and wait and pray.
…and then marvel at the beauty of this thing that was once dead…but is now brought back to life.
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