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Blossoms in concrete

Richard Maffeo

If I hadn’t glanced at the ground, I would have missed it. I don’t know what it was that had pushed its way through the crack in the sun-baked concrete. I had avoided botany in college, I had never paid much attention to gardens, and I wouldn’t know a chrysanthemum from a hyacinth. But when the flower caught my attention, I stopped in my tracks and bent to examine this thing which breathed beauty. Violet petals cradled elegantly around its wispy yellow-white core. Morning dew shimmered on its petals like crystal on dark velvet. It stood alone, this fragrant masterpiece; the nearest greenery was several feet away.

How did it get there? Perhaps summer breezes swept a seed from somewhere and dropped it into the waiting soil beneath that cracked slab of cement. Perhaps an insect carried it to that spot. But how it got there is not so important as that it grew there. Alone, in the midst of an inhospitable environment, it responded with resplendent grace.

The Psalmist wrote, “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). He knew, as does anyone who has seen the sun rise and set long enough, that no one is immune to hardship and tragedy. At any time, you and I might find ourselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The burdens of illness, divorce, death, financial turmoil or some other slab of life’s concrete can beat us into the ground, and the nearest friend might seem millions of miles away. Nevertheless, how we got there is not nearly as important as what we do there.

The apostle Paul wrote from a rat-infested dungeon, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). One might be tempted to think: Sure, that’s easy enough for Paul to say. After all, he was an apostle. Yet, church history resounds with the echoes of men and women with natures just like ours who, despite adversity, blossomed where they were planted and bore fruit for the Master Gardener.

I almost missed something else that afternoon while I admired the lone flower. As I rose to my feet, I noticed that four new buds had pushed themselves through the soil at its base. I smiled. There, between a rock and a hard place, that intricately delicate creation of the Master was reproducing itself. With God’s help, we can do likewise.

Richard Maffeo is a writer from San Diego, Calif.

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Last modified June 27, 2000.

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