Queen for a Day

"Day lilies only last for a day," I said, as I glimpsed my granddaughter Allison coming in the door in her pajamas with a bouquet of freshly picked blooms. She nodded, smiling, as she hurried in.

It was the morning of Mother's Day. I had noticed a vase of the flowers placed thoughtfully on the table when I got up in the middle of the night, along with some handmade plaster-of-paris gifts, still damp from the mold and sticky with bright paint. A shimmering bouquet of Mylar balloons anchored on the table by a red-foiled weight bumped the ceiling.

Sure enough, the flowers had closed this morning, and she had made a dash outside to replace them before her mom saw them. I had seen the younger children, guided by their big sister, surreptitiously darting around the corner of the house wearing disposable gloves and carrying art supplies the previous evening. Mother's Day was always a big day in our son's household.

My first experience with day lilies was when we moved to Mississippi from New Orleans many years ago. There was a golden circle of them in the huge flower bed in the front yard of the country house we had bought. It was bordered by a lush stand of monkey grass, something else new to me, which later I found bore lovely purple flowers. I soon found out that the pretty blossoms of the day lily wilt overnight, usually being replaced by another fresh bloom if there is another pod on the stalk.

What a shame, I always thought, to bloom for only a day. But that is just one of the ways of nature, set in place by God, Creator of all things. In an expanded sense, that is the way of our lives. We are born, grow up, mature, and bloom for our day in the sun, so to speak. (Even a thousand years is only one day to God, the Bible says.)

"For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever," I Peter 1:24,25.

However, verse 23 says we are "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." We are told in verses 18 and 19 that we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without spot or blemish, and (22)"See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently."

I think that is what the children were doing with the flowers and gifts.