When daffodils begin to peer,
With the heigh!  the doxy over the dale,
When, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.
~William Shakespeare

Winter here has been drawing more and more pale for some time because “the sweet o’ the year” prematurely moved in to steal its frigid shows of ice and snow.  Since mid-January, we’ve had an inordinate number of sun-drenched and warmish days, and as the sun was strengthening and temperatures were rising higher than usual, earth’s heartbeat quickened.  Now in mid-February I’m finding random emergences and swellings in the garden.  In some places, I’ve found not only the tinting of buds but flowers in full bloom.  Though it appears that an early spring may have also been occurring where Shakespeare was when he penned these lines, something is perplexing in this excerpt.  Notice that he does not mention the presence of other flowers.  Fortunately for us here in north central Texas when our daffodils “begin to peer” from out their papery sheaths, they are not alone.  Even if they rise early from their wintry beds, they find themselves in the happy company of other early risers like hellebores, crocuses, hyacinths, flowering quinces, and saucer magnolias.

The flowers of late winter and spring occupy places
in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.
~Gertrude Wister

Regardless of whether they show up early or late, small for sure on earth’s vast stage are the first flowers of spring.  However, as dawn’s sunlight fractures darkness in the physical world, they fracture darkness in the “spiritual world.”  And when any kind of light breaks into darknesses, joy and hope come along with them.  Much of humanity lives “with horrid darknesses,” and I believe one the subtleties of nature is that the Lord purposely built into Creation’s fabric the repetition of sparks of light, even tiny ones, that keep igniting anew the glow of His healing and restoring light.  Rev. J. Philip Newell notes that the light of God “dapples through the whole of creation.  It is within the brilliance of the morning sun and the whiteness of the moon at night.  It issues forth in all that grows from the ground and the life that shines from the eyes of any living creature.”  So I believe it is by Divine intent and for sacred purpose that these wee flowers occupy special places in the human heart.  A tiny crack in a dam, for example, eventually gives way to the flood it holds back, and in the same way crack after crack in spiritual darkness regardless of its size lets in a torrent of God’s holy light.  And when the fullness of His Light finally breaks through, it brings with it a deluge of His goodness and grace and mercy.

May great things come to you this week from the tiny flowerings on earth and those that grow in your spirit.

You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.  ~Psalm 18:28