the little yellow flower

"a flower of the field"

Psalm 103:15

I pulled a weed the other day.  And then sort of wished I hadn't. 

I did it rather absent-mindedly.  It was in the front yard, in the planter right next to the driveway.  I was out front saying good-bye to my sweetie, and I glanced over at what's normally a weed-free planter, with one succulent in the middle, but there was this weed in there, so I gave it a quick yank, returning the planter to weed-free.

Then I looked at what was in my hand, and saw that it was more than just a weed; it was a wildflower. 

Now you might be of the opinion that a wildflower is just a weed with a flower on it, but that would be cynical of you.  Besides, there's more to the story... 

The weed came completely out of the dirt, root and all, and the whole thing measures eighteen inches in length.  One stem, with one flower on it.  That's all.  But eighteen inches tall! 

And even more interesting:  of that eighteen inches, the root system was a little less than three inches.  And the flower?  A little yellow flower, smaller than my pinkie nail.  That's it.   

I really don't know why this struck me so deeply.  Somehow it made me think of the rose in one of my favorite books, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince.  A sweet, delicate unassuming flower, of whom the little prince said, "If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.  He can say to himself: 'Somewhere, my flower is there...' "

Such a sweet book...

The little flower went almost unnoticed by me.  I didn't even think to take a picture of it until long after it had died, and now I have to substitute a photo of a different yellow flower... 

But I kept thinking that maybe there was something to learn from that wildflower...

I don't know if the lesson is about the length of the root in relation to the stem.  Three inches of root was enough to hold 15 inches of stem above ground.  God wants us firmly rooted in Him, and we can then accomplish much.

I don't know if the lesson is about the length of the stem in relation to the size of the flower.  It seemed like a tiny flower for all that stem.  But that's part of what made it seem so sweet and delicate to me.  It didn't have much to show off, but it held its beauty up proudly.

Or maybe it was about the existence of this one solitary weed in what's normally a somewhat inhospitable environment for weeds.  I don't know how it grew so tall without my seeing it, and pulling it before it had a chance to flower.  Maybe the lesson is about perseverance. 

Or maybe it's just about appreciating beauty, and being teachable enough to not let one tiny yellow lesson go unlearned.

~ "Out of Zion,

the perfection of beauty,

God will shine forth" ~

Psalm 50:2

~