Every Morning

Every morning I walk out the back door, there they are. Rain or shine, they greet me with their perfect form, their brilliant colors, their velvet texture.

They are Morning Glories.

I tried growing them on purpose once -- tried so hard to get them to take root, thrive in the soil I had specially provided. I picked what I believed to be the perfect spot with just the correct amount of sunlight at just the right time of day. But had no success.

Upon moving into our current home in mid-January, I had no idea what I would find in the landscape. Would gardens burst forth in the spring after sleeping all winter? Or would the years that the house had sat nearly vacant with its prior owner spending months at a time in a hospital bed have taken its toll and render my garden beds full of nothing but overgrown thistles, monstrous dandelions, and vigorous bind weed? Little did I know one of the plants I had so fervently tried to grow at our previous house was waiting quietly just under the soil's surface.

Now they come back in all of their glory every year -- producing more blooms with each passing growing season. The deep purple which I have come to love and is also by fair the most common of Morning Glory varieties is the most numerous among them but the vines have also begun to produce flowers of more rare hues, including a vibrant pink and a white adorned with small brushstrokes of blue.

And I do absolutely nothing to bring them back.

Each morning, the bell-shaped flowers open and by early afternoon, close. Each morning my girls have to pick out just the right one to sniff (even though they really have hardly a scent at all) and carry with them until they wilt. No matter what kind of weather or conditions the vines endured the day or night before, the Morning Glories are a guarantee each following morning. I'd love to say it is because of my hard work, my toiling for hours in the sun, that these blooms adorn our walkway. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

And each morning, the flowers remind me. They remind me of Him. And His incredible mercy.

No matter what the day or night before had brought, despite my numerous short-comings and failings as a wife, a mother, a friend, God's love is there in the morning. And it is new.

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.' ~Lamentations 3:22-24

And just as those vines continue to twist and turn, reaching for the sky and bringing forth flowers perfect in color and shape without a single human intervention, so does our Almighty Father's love and grace cover us each morning with absolutely no regard for what you or I have done. There is nothing we could do to stop it and there is nothing we need to do to make sure it continues. It simply is.

I am never ceased to be amazed at the way the Lord uses His creation to teach us about Himself -- sure, He may have some other rather "scientific" reason for creating a flower that only remains open for the morning hours. But I know that those little wonders of His hand have also instilled in me a newness each morning that I can barely explain. A newness that is out of my control.

A newness that makes all of the difference.