Mother Nature can put on quite a show. Her latest scene wasn't a summer storm, though. It was a quiet event, one that would probably been missed if I hadn't taken the dogs out at just the right moment this week. In my flower garden grow a small group of resurrection lilies. They're named this because, in the spring, they send out shoots much like an amaryllis does. Unlike the amaryllis, the shoots turn brown and die leaving the ground bare, as if the greenery was the total show. Then, later in the summer, long tall stalks break through the ground and pink, trumpet-like blooms grace the tops of them. It's life after death.
Monday, as I headed out the door with Valium and Prozac (my dogs, not the drugs), I noticed something else at the top of the stalk. There were two cicadas there. Wait. No. There was only one cicada; the 'second' insect was the shell of its former self. The real cicada was clinging to the stem, gathering strength to go on to its next phase of life. Again, life after death.
After I walked the dogs and gotten them safely inside the house, I went back to the porch to ponder the scene. I should have taken a picture. A better metaphor for faith I don't think I could have concocted. Behold, one of God's creatures breaking forth into something new, leaving behind that which was a part of itself but no longer able to be carried. Both the shell and the new self clinging to a slender, flowering stem that had risen from the darkness of the earth.
To make my way along this path of faith, I may need to shed some things I can no longer afford to carry. They are the things that keep me from taking wing. And, when I'm searching for a place to make that transformation, all I need is a slender branch of hope on which to cling.
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