THE FLOWERS OF THE SEASON

OK - quick. What flowers do you associate with Easter? If you're like me, the answer is lilies. How about Christmas? If your answer is like mine, it's poinsettias.

I recently took a bus trip to Longwood Gardens to enjoy the Christmas flowers and lighting displays. I have been to the Gardens a number of times in all seasons, but the Christmas colors and lights always give me real pleasure and joy. On this particular day I was remarking to a friend of mine that the arrangements were unusual in that the gardeners had placed various types of flowers, not usually associated with Christmas, in with all of the evergreens and poinsettias. We saw daisies and narcissus, for instance, and beautiful white lilies.

And then it struck me. The message of Christmas and the resurrection were presented right there together for all of us to behold. The flowers we most associate with the Christmas season are those beautiful scarlet poinsettias. They become the precursor of Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross for us, the shedding of his red blood on our behalf. And in the same flower bed with the red poinsettias, there were planted snow white lilies - that flower we most associate with the season of Easter as we focus on the resurrection. Those pure white lilies which symbolize our sinless and spotless state before God because of Jesus' death and His victorious resurrection.

Come now, and reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool (Isaiah 1:18).

Now I don't have any idea how the decision was reached to plant the lilies and poinsettias together. Maybe the gardener or designer of the plantings was a Christian and was thinking of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection when he made his choice. Maybe he just liked the color and arrangement together. I'll probably never know that. But what I DO know is that our Master Designer knew exactly what He was doing when He set out the plan for our salvation. The incarnation and the atonement have an inescapable relationship to each other. So each Christmas season from now on, I will remember those flowers together and thank God once again that He provides these demonstrations to remind us of His great love for us.

Lynn Randall