I love flowers.  The older I get the more I love to plant flowers and see them grow.  I have never planted bulbs in Scottsdale.  It never gets cold enough here so I have only dreamed about planting tulips and daffodils.  I was up in Flagstaff last fall and had to go to home depot for a home repair project.  I went by the bulbs hanging on a tree hanger and decided this was the year to plant bulbs in our Flagstaff cottage garden.  It was a beautiful day in November, so I got the necessary mulch, picked out the kinds of daffodil bulbs I wanted, and threw in  some hyacinth bulbs to place in front of the daffodils.  It was a warm day so the digging in the garden was very easy.  I put about 2 inches of mulch over the bulbs and went about my business with my repair project.

All winter long, I wondered if my bulbs would come up in the spring.  We didn’t get up to our place because of all the company we had down in the valley.  It was a warm to hot winter in Scottsdale and I longed to get up to the cooler climate–and see my bulbs.  Last weekend was the time to see what had sprouted.  It was night when we arrived at our house so the first thing I did on Saturday was to go out to my garden in the front of the house to see if the flowers had bloomed.  Guess what?

My daffodils had come forth.  It was early, so there were a lot of blooms that would burst forth, but these flowers were singing.  The hyacinths were just peaking through the soil and will probably bloom in a couple of weeks.  But my daffodils were trumpeting their beauty to any that wanted to look.

I am reminded of a passage in I Corinthians 3: 6 which says, “I planted the seed (bulb), Apollos (I) watered it, but God has been making it grow.”  I bought the bulbs.  I planted the bulbs.  I watered the bulbs.  God caused the bulbs to grow.  It’s a perfect picture of what the Lord wants us to do in this life.  Plant seeds and bulbs.  Water seeds and bulbs.  Plant and water.  That’s it.  It’s God’s responsibility to cause growth in what I have planted and watered.  In my bulbs.  In the seeds that I sow in the lives of others.  I am planting seeds of ethics and morality in the lives of my children.  I sometimes water those seeds.  It is God’s responsibility to take those seeds and cause growth in them and in others.

I didn’t sweat or toil in making those bulbs grow over the winter time.  I just anticipated that they would come up and show me the beautiful flowers that they did.  God caused the growth.  When we see that our responsibility in this life is to plant and water and not be responsible for growth, it takes all the worry and anxiety away.  Plant and water.  That’s all.

On this journey, it makes life so much more enjoyable when we allow God to do His work and we do ours.  Happy planting.