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Flowers

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This is a chapter from my latest book called (G)rains (o)f san(d)s. Learn more about the book here.

Thank you God for the flowers. I bought a blue daze flowering plant for my mom when I went out to walk one day. It adds some colour to the nature in the yard. It is beautiful. I was told that blue flowers are rare. My friend says that blue is relatively rare in nature due to chemical and physical challenges in producing this color in living organisms. Nothing exists completely on its own. Plants depend on insects and other creatures, while those creatures depend on plants and their flowers. There is an interconnectedness in creation that reminds me that God is intentional. Flowers are beautiful but so is everything else if we really consider things with an open mind. What is beauty? What makes some things more beautiful than others? They say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Beauty is subjective.

My friend says that what I am talking about is the perceptual mind where meaning and context matters. A common wildflower can seem far more beautiful than an expensive garden display if it represents a personal memory, a quiet moment of gratitude, or a thoughtful gift for someone you love. Context transforms simple visual data into meaning. If no one sees your beauty or what you think is beautiful, God does. God is beautiful. True beauty often reveals itself when we step back from an individual object to see its place in a larger system. Beauty then is the recognition of harmony. The harmony that God has created and placed us in and within us.

Within us is the real beauty. Real beauty is in the heart. That inner beauty then radiates outwards. Beauty lives within us and how we live. Beauty is when we live like God wants us to live. Beauty is what the soul carries. A flower is obviously beautiful by consensus. But what about a grain of sand? To see the beauty in a grain of sand we might have to put it under a microscope. We would have to learn how a grain of sand is formed. The time it took to be crafted by the forces of nature. We live in a world where everything has to happen quickly. This has me thinking that we should give ourselves time to mature and become beautiful. The sage becomes wise with age. Perhaps beauty, like wisdom, is something that deepens with time. And perhaps the deepest beauty is the kind that takes a lifetime to reveal. Maybe that is why often we give people their flowers after they are no longer with us. There is a lesson in this though. Do not wait for beauty to reveal itself. See the beauty before. See the potential before. Give people their flowers while they are still with us and not only when they are gone.
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