What is there, after all, like the creative genius of God in nature? Just one blossom taken from a neighbor's tree resplendent with multiple others--actually crowned with them.The tree was years in bearing fruit--somewhat to the dismay of our neighbor brother who sometimes complained about that, even while carefully nurturing it in hope.
He did not live to see it blossom, and his widow, now in a nearby senior nursing facility, will only see it once we get a picture of the whole tree to her where she is.
But we see it, and rejoice in both the lace-like delicacy of its blooms and their marvelous fragrance. Thus do our neighbors, no longer next door, bless us yet with the fruits of their labor finally realized. And we bless them both in our beholding--George for whom we once knew him to be and Virginia yet nearby, though no longer next door.
To God ultimately belongs the glory, as the Apostle Paul once put it. One plants, as did our neighbor, and others have watered and trimmed when he no longer could, but God has brought the increase. All is of him and to him all will ultimately return. Each of us has a role to play in the cycles of natural wonders, and if faithful to that role as our neighbor was, we need not doubt that others will be blessed by the fruits of our labors as well.
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