Forever

We have a couple of amaryllis that have just seemed to outdo themselves this winter.  Each of them has grown two stems of flowers.  One had a four-flower stem and later a five-flower stem; the other grew both stems at the same time and had eight lovely flowers all at once.

Amaryllis are relatively inexpensive and easy to grow.  They are much harder to get to bloom the next year, however.  I have a bulb I have tried to get to bloom for about three years now, and so far all it does when it comes out of dormancy is set out leaves.  Not a sign of a flowering stem in sight.

Yes, I’ve read about how to get them to bloom again.  But something just isn’t right.  So each year we buy another amaryllis in a pot and enjoy the flowers.  But now I have four bulbs, two of which have bloomed, one which has sent out leaves, and one which has some green on the end of the bulb, but hasn’t done anything yet.  Of course, I hate to throw anything away, and probably will set them out this summer to bask in the warmth and breeze.  Then I’ll fumble around with them and try to get them to bloom this winter.  But in the end, we’ll probably end up buying one or two more that we know will bloom for us.

My aunt Dorothy knew how to make amaryllis bloom from year to year.  When they were living at home, she had several bulbs she would coax into blooming from year to year.  She said it wasn’t hard and told me how she did it.  I thought I did the same thing, but evidently I don’t hold my mouth right or something.  Because it just doesn’t work for me.

Flower bulbs are magical things.  Just think of all that is in an amaryllis bulb.  Beautiful colors, delicate flowers, sturdy stems, a reproduction mechanism, and nourishing leaves all are packed into a bulb that gets its nourishment from dirt, water, and the sun.  There are also sensors of some kind that can tell when water, warmth, and sunlight are present in the right mixtures.  And when that happens, it signals somehow for the bulb to grow.

Flowers, though, are like everything else on this earth.  They eventually decay and die.  Even the most beautiful of flowers eventually turns back to the dust from where it came.

And so it is with everything else in the world.  Trees, houses, automobiles, animals and people; we all eventually turn back into the dust from whence we came.  (I think Twinkies [R.I.P.] may be the only exception to that.)  Even rocks…the great granite mountains…will eventually, they say, turn into soil and dust.

And so it goes.  We do well to remember that even though we have things to do today, and places to go today, and people to see today, one day we too will turn back into the soil and dirt from whence we came.  And the souls and spirits that inhabit us will go somewhere else, there to wait until thry are united with, as the great Apostle Paul said, “the imperishable.”

When we remember that we are here for but a breath of time in the great scheme of things, we tend to look at things differently.  We tend to think differently.  We tend to interact with our world differently.  And that’s a good thing because our time here is so short compared to the forever that is coming.

If we don’t prepare for the forever in the here and now, when will we do it?  Or will we lurch into eternity forever unprepared for what lies ahead?