Enjoying the Beauty That Is Now

I had the privilege of having lunch with Justin Van Zee the other week when he was in Grand Rapids. In his typical appreciative way, he mentioned how much he’s enjoyed reading the midweek reflections Elizabeth and I have been writing this past year. Then he took the opportunity to rib us just a little bit about how many of the writings seem to deal with gardening imagery. “Yeah,” he said, “It’s been great. A lot of times, I’ll get halfway through my week, and then I’ll think to myself…hmm…I wonder how Jay and Elizabeth’s garden is going. So I’ll go and open the midweek reflection to find out.” It’s true, I conceded. But in our defense, there’s a reason—there’s something incredibly rich about the imagery of gardening as it relates to our spiritual lives.

And so when it came time to write the midweek reflection this week, I asked myself—well, what’s been going on in our garden? And then I knew instantly what I needed to write about this week.

It started about a week and a half ago. We have a series of flower boxes on our driveway along the side of our house. For most of the summer so far, two of these boxes have been filled with beautiful flowers (a mixture of ones I grew from seed and ones Elizabeth purchased from various nurseries). But one of these flower boxes has housed an overgrown tomato plant. I bought it in a moment of weakness from Brianna’s Blandford school plant sale fundraiser back in May. Normally buying plants from a fundraiser would not be a problem—I’d be happy to support the cause. But I knew form past experience that we wouldn’t be happy with these tomatoes from this particular vendor. They’d be bland, and nothing like what a homegrown tomato in Michigan can or should be. Plus, I was growing more than enough tomato plants of our own—we had no need for more tomato plants.

However, this tomato plant already had small tomatoes growing on it, so I thought I could get a jump on the tomato season and start enjoying tomatoes weeks before my own tomatoes would be ready. Plus, these were extra plants—nobody had ordered them, and unless someone bought them, the organizers would get stuck with the cost of the plants and the fundraiser would have sunk costs that would eat away at the profits. So, in addition to three baskets of hanging flowers that I knew would be excellent, I also came home with a tomato plant I suspected I would regret.

Sure enough, the hanging flowers have flourished in our backyard. The tomato plant, however, has been a disaster. The chipmunks ate the first tomatoes (apparently they like more than just kale). The next ones I ate too early in the hope of keeping the chipmunks from getting them. When I finally had a ripe tomato, it was indeed bland, just like I had feared. Then the rains came and all the tomatoes started to split before I harvested them. And to top it off, the plant started tipping over into the driveway, and I couldn’t figure out a good way to rig it to stay straight. Finally I pulled the plant out altogether and threw it into the compost.

But that left an empty flower box alongside our house. It’s pretty late in the year to plant anything, but I remembered how much Elizabeth has enjoyed watching the zinnias grow and bloom—especially the ones from the seeds we received at Easter. So I thought I’d go ahead and plant some zinnia seeds in this empty flowerbox and see if they had time to flower before the first frost in the fall. I planted them just before heading off to St Louis with the kids, thinking that maybe the seedlings would be visible by the time we returned. I also wanted them to surprise Elizabeth, so I didn’t say anything about them.

Elizabeth, however, stayed behind in Michigan and also saw the empty flowerbox. When we returned, I was surprised to find a box full of flowers—an assortment of flowers we had purchased from the nursery this spring. I was confused at first, thinking maybe Elizabeth had moved a box from the front of the house and my box of zinnia seedlings were still around somewhere. But then I looked more closely and realized Elizabeth had transplanted some flowers from the other (slightly-crowded) boxes and used them to fill the empty flower box. My seedlings—which Elizabeth knew nothing about—had been obliterated by Elizabeth’s nursery plants.

I wasn’t going to say anything about it at first, but the more I reflect about it, and each time I’m reminded of it as I walk by these flowers, the more amused I am by it. There’s something about it that reminds me of the short story The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry where the wife cuts her hair to buy a chain for her husband’s pocket watch while the husband sells his watch to buy precious combs to put in his wife’s hair. I don’t know entirely why our flowerbox reminds me of this story—neither one of us sacrificed anything, after all. But there’s something about each of us doing something to surprise the other without telling them, and then thwarting that person’s plan in the process.

I’m also amused by the different approaches we each took. Elizabeth went for the instant satisfaction of seeing already-blooming plants fill the empty space. I, on the other hand, played the long game and thought about the wonder of watching something grow and the somehow-appealing uncertainty of whether we would ever see those zinnias bloom. I’d like to say this is an instance of where delayed gratification brought greater reward, but I don’t think that’s the case. Elizabeth’s approach was clearly the better one—it’s delightful to walk by flowers already in bloom, the flowerboxes look better with all three of them filled with blooming flowers, and the other boxes, which had been overcrowded, now look even better.

There are plenty of parts of the Christian life where we are told to look ahead at the glory that is to come. To keep our eyes on Jesus so that we can endure our current hardships. But sometimes it’s good, too, to step back and see the glory that already surrounds us. To celebrate the beauty that is here and now.