Lily of the Valley

“I am the Lily of the Valley”,  I heard those words reverberate in my mind as I hung up the phone from my brother, Terry.  He and I had been conversing about my dad’s going home journey.  As the words spun in my mind, I stood looking out the kitchen window of my dad and mom’s home place. Many times I had thought about this particular verse in God’s word.  Yes, He is the  lily of the valley, and bright and morning Star, but somehow, I felt something inside my soul stirring that it was something more God was saying to me at this unique time.

After the funeral and sad good byes to everyone, all the family started their own trips back to their homes.  For me it was going back to Delaware, with our children and our church family.  Not long after we had gotten back, I thought to myself, I would began a study on the lily to see if there was anything in particular

I could glean from those words, I am the Lily of the Valley.  I started that day in prayer thinking about this passage, when it seemed again I heard a still voice say, Have you considered the lily? Have you thought about the way it grows?  Then like a bolt of lightening my spirit was quickened as I began to think about the lily and how it was planted.  It is nothing but a ugly old bulb, placed into the dirt.  Time passes, the harsh winter with snow and ice may cover the place it was buried in the soil.  I may forget the  exact location the old bulb was planted.  But there is someone bigger than me in control of all the seeds and bulbs.   For no matter where the old shell of the bulb has been planted,when the temperature gets just right after the cold frigid winter, and the sun-shine appears … something happens to the seed that has been lying in earth’s soil.  For after the saturation of  winter’s snow, the rain and fierce wind, … one day the sun does shine it’s warmth again and one day we look and we see the lilly breaking through.

The miracle comes up from this seemingly barren valley.  Soon the glorious trumpeting Easter lily appears… silently, majestically! We know just as Christ body lay inside the ground waiting for the right time to resurrect, so the lilly awaits the sunshine and the weather t o be just right and soon it breaks forth. it is heralding the good news, “Christ has arisen”.  

This is the hope found in the valley- the hope of Resurrection.

Hope found me there and I saw with my heart the lily of the valley, not only with my eyes.  There in the valley the lilly of the valley regally declares, Jesus Christ is the lilly of the Valley!  He has risen and now because He arose … we Can Arise too.  No cement or grave can hold our body down.  when the temperature gets world