ON DANDELIONS AND THE WORD OF GOD . . .

The Rev. Deacon Polly M. Bowen

My lawnmower died this year, and before I was able to do anything about it I had the longest grass in the neighborhood, complete with a bumper crop of dandelions.  My neighbors stared silently at me whenever I got in my car to go somewhere, and I imagined they were working on a petition to have me removed from the neighborhood.  My friends came and went as usual, politely avoiding the subject of my unkempt lawn.

In the midst of all this my lilac bush burst into prolific bloom, a radiant lavender queen surveying her disheveled land.  Suddenly people were speaking to me again.  “What gorgeous lilacs,” they said.  “How fragrant they are!  It must be the early spring (or the late spring, or the cold weather, or the short winter) that makes them so lovely this year.”

Nobody complimented me on my dandelions.

Now, I have to admit that the lilacs are beautiful, and I do love them.  But ever since my first little toddler brought me that first bedraggled bouquet, I’ve had a special fondness for dandelions.  These bright little buttons of beauty are God’s special gift to two-year-olds and Mommies.  It makes me sad when I see someone working feverishly to kill the stray dandelions in his yard; I think those sunny yellow dots punctuate an otherwise ordinary lawn with character and interest.  Be that as it may, a lot of effort goes into stamping out dandelions.  But they keep coming back.

The word of God is like a dandelion.  It shines like a bright spot in a dark world, giving comfort and pleasure to those who can “see” it.  But there’s always someone trying to stamp it out, because only those who can see with the vision of a child appreciate its beauty.

We often forget that God comes to us in the simplest ways.  Life is complex, and the unexplainable mysteries of God (“explained” in 12-volume texts by theologians who never think about dandelions) seem complex, too.  But just when you think it’s all too much to bother with and the world is a mess and getting messier, and you have more important things to do anyway, some little kid picks dandelions from the midst of a straggly lawn and brings his Mommy a bouquet.  And on a deeper, heart and soul level where complicated explanations aren’t needed, God is at work.

Sometimes we need to let go of our orderly, fact-filled world and operate on that deeper level.  We, who ask God to bless our baptismal candidates with the gift of joy and wonder in all His works, need to learn to appreciate the Word and work of God in the simple things around us.

We need to look around us with the eyes of a little child.  Only such a person would see God at work in a dandelion.  Only such a person would think to gather a bouquet of them to share with a friend, and only such a person would think to take a deep breath and deliberately blow the puffy seeds away, scattering the Word and work of God to the four winds, to be discovered anew by others.

Thank God for the gift and lesson of dandelions!