Advent Day 18: Rose of Sharon | Lily of the Valley | Tender Plant

Rose Window, Unknown Artisans, 1900. Stained glass window, Church of the Nativity, Menlo Park, California. Public Domain.

“Rose of Bethlehem” from the album Rose of Bethlehem. Performed by Selah featuring Nicol (Smith) Sponberg, composed by Lowell Alexander.

Poetry:

“Wildflower”
by Stanley Plumly

Some—the ones with fish names—grow so north
they last a month, six weeks at most.
Some others, named for the fields they look like,
last longer, smaller.

And these, in particular, whether trout or corn lily,
onion or bellwort, just cut
this morning and standing open in tapwater in the kitchen,
will close with the sun.

It is June, wildflowers on the table.
They are fresh an hour ago, like sliced lemons,
with the whole day ahead of them.
They could be common mayflower lilies of the valley,

day lilies, or the clustering Canada, large, gold,
long-stemmed as pasture roses, belled out over the vase--
or maybe Solomon's seal, the petals
ranged in small toy pairs

or starry, tipped at the head like weeds.
They could be anonymous as weeds.
They are, in fact, the several names of the same thing,
lilies of the field, butter-and-eggs,

toadflax almost, the way the whites and yellows juxtapose,
and have "the look of flowers that are looked at,"
rooted as they are in water, glass, and air.
I remember the summer I picked everything,

flower and wildflower, singled them out in jars
with a name attached. And when they had dried as stubborn
as paper I put them on pages and named them again.
They were all lilies, even the hyacinth,

even the great pale flower in the hand of the dead.
I picked it, kept it in the book for years
before I knew who she was,
her face lily-white, kissed and dry and cold.

Like the Lilies

It is so easy to take time for granted. For example, there’s the obvious error of failing to be present in the time we’ve been given, and then only regretting the gift we have ignored when it is too late.

But there are other ways of taking time for granted, too. Perhaps one of the more common errors is to take an overblown sense of the temporal world’s importance for granted, to believe that the time we have now is all we will ever have and everything that happens within it is absolute. We can begin to regard current events as the most important events, lose our sense of Kingdom perspective in a fear that Reality is in fact as bad as it seems right now, and that it is up to us to solve every problem we see or else fail to save the world from itself.

A wise mentor in my life often observes that it should not surprise us that the world is falling apart, or that horrible things happen all the time. The world is and has always been dying, in every recorded age — especially since the moment it crucified Christ, the Source and Sustainer of all life. Part of the wisdom of Advent is its setting aside of time to contemplate this truth. Advent looks toward Christ’s coming at the manger, an arrival that heralded the beginning of new life in our dying world — but that life could only begin through Christ’s death on the Cross. And Advent also looks toward Christ’s second coming, when He will bring the end of the current age in order to inaugurate an age of fully renewed, healed life.

As we take these four weeks to anticipate the two arrivals of our Lord, we find ourselves called to inhabit a great and often painful tension: we are called to live like the Life of the World in a world that is slowly dying. This is a necessarily difficult state of being. Death and life do not sit comfortably beside each other. Living this way often requires us to sustain the pain of death as, like Christ on the cross, we die to ourselves or on behalf of others for the sake of bringing new life into the world. No one who is truly surrendered to the Life of Christ will be spared the call to participate in the birth pangs of creation.

Consider the flowers mentioned in today’s Scripture selections, poem, and music. Perhaps more than any other plant, flowers show us that in this world the glorious beauty of life cannot save itself from the ravages of time. Flowers grow and bloom and are quickly gone. They wilt before our eyes within a matter of days, or even hours.

By God’s mercy, though, the fading of the flowers is not the end of the story. For Christ — He who is Life itself — joined us in this world, chose to bind Himself to a body like ours, and He too likens Himself to the flowers of the field:

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

He shall grow like the lily and lengthen His roots like Lebanon.

He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground.

By joining us in being like the flowers, Christ confirms, recreates, and makes eternal every life that is bound to His life. The Root of Jesse is life Himself, and cannot die — time cannot wither His beauty, death cannot overtake His existence. Therefore, the Rose of Sharon that died will spring back to life, and after it is resurrected it will never fade again.

Those of us who join Christ, who willingly participate in His death and His life, find that no matter what we face in this world of passing time, the Life that is given to us is enough to sustain us. We must consent to die with Christ. But as we do so His life will hold and carry us, and He will make us like Himself. Like Him, we shall grow like the lilies, and in the fullness of Christ’s time — in that new earth He will inaugurate one day soon — we will never die.

Prayer:
Lord, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. A thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. They are like grass: in the morning it flourishes, in the evening it withers. All our days have passed away in Your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh. Please, teach us to number our days so we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us early with Your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands for us. Establish the work of our hands. Amen.

—from Psalm 90, NKJV

Alea Peister
Copywriter for Deloitte Digital
Alumna, Torrey Honors College
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, please visit our website via the link in our bio.