The big picture

Daisies are my favorite flower, because to me, they seem to smile out at the world.

Jesus has been giving me a lot of them recently, since they grow as wildflowers on our lawn. I was spoiled, though, when on the day before Pentecost I was asked to help make the flower arrangements for the chapel, and I had ten gorgeous Gerber daisies at my disposal. That day I helped prepare for the Vigil Mass of Pentecost, which was my first. In the evening Mass, we read the four readings and sang the four psalms, inserting songs in English, Portuguese, Italian, and German into our Spanish Mass. The Holy Spirit was palpably filling the hearts of his faithful and enkindling in us the fire of his love…

So, those daisies. Usually when we use Gerber daisies for the altar arrangements, we twist a little wire from their head to the stem so that they don´t droop so quickly under their own weight. The problem was, when we were making the arrangements this time, we couldn´t find the wire…so, as expected, the next morning six of the ten daisies were pitifully drooped over. When I went to fix them, I accidentally broke one off its stem. I was a little annoyed, since it meant one less big beautiful daisy for the bouquet. But it was someone´s birthday that day, so remembering that, I left the daisy in her chapel spot, and thought nothing more of it.

That evening, as we were having the birthday celebration, the birthday girl mentioned that someone had left her a yellow daisy for her birthday. She told us that Jesus has a habit of giving her yellow flowers, so when she saw the yellow daisies on the altar the day of her birthday, she thought “maybe they´re for me…” So, of course, when one was given specifically to her, she knew without a doubt that it was a gift to her from Jesus.

I had no idea of any of that.

So many times in my life this happens on a bigger scale. I “mess something up”, get annoyed about it… if I´m in a good mood I may even try to be a little optimistic… and I leave it at that. But united to the Holy Spirit I have the option to zoom out and live in the big picture. That big picture is that he wants so much to purify, cleanse, heal, inflame, and enliven me, that whenever he has the space to do so, he rushes in like a waterfall. He´s calling me to live constantly in the REAL world… which is not the one I see.