Weeds and Wildflowers

Sometimes God drops little treasures at our feet.

Sometimes literally.

On Monday morning I took our family's dog, Ciara, for a walk in Elmwood Park, where the ground was still wet from the rainy weekend. I glanced ahead to an open green field and saw something beautiful. The morning sun transformed thousands of raindrops into tiny rainbows through the prisms of the drops. It was as if God had tossed handfuls of glistening jewels before us. It was stunning.

Then I noticed something interesting. The field was mostly patches of low-lying weeds with slender blades of grass poking through. The weeds' wide flat leaves cradled the raindrop gems, but the thin verticle grass blades could not contain the drops. 

Then I recalled something St. Therese of Lisieux wrote in her autobiography "Story of a Soul."

"Jesus deigned to teach me this mystery. He set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the Lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and  the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers.

"And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus' garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to Lilies and roses, but He has created smaller ones and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God's glances when He looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be."

The weeds I saw contained a lesson similar to that of St. Therese's wild flowers. We of this world would prefer manicured grass over weeds. But on Monday morning God chose the lowly weeds to reflect His glorious sunshine. The grass has its place, but so do the weeds, at least in God's Kingdom. It is exactly in their lowliness that the undesirable, the misfits and sinners can sparkle with God's radiant love and glory.

St. Therese says of these souls:

"It is to their hearts that God deigns to lower Himself. These are the wild flowers whose simplicity attracts Him. When coming down in this way, God manifests His infinite grandeur. Just as the sun shines simultaneously on the tall cedars and on each little flower as though it were alone on the earth, so Our Lord is occupied particularly with each soul as though there were no others like it. And just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to make the humblest daisy bloom on a set day, in the same way, everything works out for the good of each soul."

St. Therese, the Little Flower, shed even more light on Monday morning's glistening treasure. Thank You, Lord, for Your greatness in everything little.

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this from Susan Szalewski about exploring and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays and see the Year of Faith Blog here.