Choose life

When I moved into my new house the garden needed a little attention. It has overgrown and there seemed to be a forest of weeds at the back.

During the second lockdown I decided to spend an hour a day trying to clear some of them. I remembered that when I put in my statue of Our Blessed Mother Mary she has gestured something about the ground in my prayers.

So I got to it. A combined effort of hacking down the wilderness and digging. There were brambles entwined in bushes and long weeds up to my thighs but slowly and surely I began to see the earth and the edge of my lawn.

I had a wonderful surprise as I walked the garden and found new shoots of flowers that I had not planted all in the places that I had cleared. Secret flowers that I would not have seen. They are so beautiful and freshly green, reflecting a newness of life, so radiant and joyful.

I do not know what flowers they will grow into but I was so glad that I chose to clear the ground, to choose to see what life was beneath.

Moving into lent remind us to choose a life with God, to choose to see His gifts of newness He gives us, and we choose to love everyday. Many things tempt us to respond in bitter ways, to show we are angry, to show we are aggrieved, but if we choose to love, we choose to live a life in its fullness, a life of abundance with God.

His love is like the secret flowers of our hearts, part of the garden of the kingdom that is to come, new shoots of hope and the promise of the fragrance of His presence.

Let us choose life with Him everyday, and choose to love in every way.