A few days ago as I was walking through our yard, I spotted what seemed to be an old, yellow yard ornament lying some distance away. I didn’t give it much thought at first since my Grandma has an abundance of such things lying around the yard, but just as I was getting ready to go back inside several minutes later, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to go ahead and check it out. As someone who spends a good amount of time outdoors, I was confident I should’ve noticed something like that before then.

Surprisingly enough, as I got closer and closer to the suspicious object, I began to slowly realize that it was not some broken yard ornament at all; it was actually my Grandma’s crocuses beginning to bloom after a long and hard winter, boldly declaring that spring was on its way. I reasoned that there was no reason at all for me to be surprised because, in reality, it had been fairly warm over the past few days and it hadn’t snowed in quite a while. “Why shouldn’t they be blooming?” I told myself

Anyway, a couple mornings later I was very surprised to wake up to 4” of snow on the ground. Having been told by the friendly crocuses that winter was over, I felt betrayed and vowed never to trust the first flowers of spring, groundhogs, or any such wives’ tales again. After the snow was at least partially melted, I went back outside to see what had become of that old, broken down yard ornament and this is what I saw:

Spring, they told me, was still on its way. Snow and freezing temperatures couldn’t change that and they were proving it. The fact that they’d spent the last 24 hours covered in snow didn’t matter; they were made to bloom, nothing was going to stop them, and that was that.

Don’t you see? As God’s children, we are called to be a living testament to our Creator. Whether or not we shine for Him cannot depend on whether the circumstances are convenient for us to do so; we must be faithful no matter what. Really, there’s nothing at all special about someone who serves God only when everything is going their way. It’s only when our lives begin to fall apart that we have the opportunity to make our faith real and, like flowers abloom in the snow, people are going to notice when we do.