The Flower of Hope

“On an early spring morning in late March, I started for the garden to take note of the daffodil buds that were beginning to poke their shy faces from below the earth. If they had survived the winter, I could also, even thrive the same as their yellow-gold goodness.”
~Joy Davidman in Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan

This past weekend, we were doing some much-needed outside work on the farm - as much as we can do, I should say, since it’s been raining for what seems like 40 days and 40 nights. I think this particular day involved removing a pile of barbed wire and gettin’ schooled by the post-hole digger.

Anyway, in the midst of worries about the Coronavirus, wondering what the next few weeks will look like in our community here in middle Tennessee, and attempting to stay in touch with friends and family without getting too sucked into the mayhem of social media,

my daughter found this flower.

It was the only one in the entire pasture, the only one we could see on our entire 17 acre property. She came running over to me to show me her treasure, and I drew in my breath. It resembled a daffodil, but I’d never seen one like it. The wild yellow daffodils on our property were already finished blooming, leaving naked waxy stalks of leaves behind until next spring.

I looked it up online, and it’s a Poeticus Daffodil or “Poet's Daffodil.” According to this source, “These daffodils are among the very last narcissus to flower, providing a perfumed finale to the daffodil season.”

I don’t know about you, but I really needed that finale, that one single flower of hope, to remind me that beauty survives. Beauty is a gift to bolster us in the hardest of times, and we aren’t alone. We might be forced to physically isolate from our dearest friends and family, carefully inventory our pantries (not to be confused with panties, although those might soon need to be inventoried too…) to see how long they’ll last, and scan emptied grocery store shelves for anything we can turn into a meal, but this won’t last forever.

So I wanted to share this with you: God’s poetry, in the form of a single daffodil in a Mason jar on the dining room table.

Let’s choose to believe that goodness will be born and reborn from this time, as God promises to redeem all things.