We have always grown lilacs in our yard, looking forward each year for their heavenly-scented blossom announcing, “Spring is here again!”
This year, for the first time, I decided to do an oil painting of a bloom from our favorite bush. The painting proved to be quite a challenge, but it also gave me many hours both to study the anatomy of a lilac blossom and to think of this
magnificent creation fashioned by our incomparable God.
There is no question that many single blossom flowers such as roses, lilies and tulips, to name a few, are also wondrous examples of beauty from the hand of the Creator. However, the lilac blooms differ in that they are complex clusters of many individual blossoms all massed into showy displays of rich corporate beauty.
As I painted, I was impressed by how much the local church is like a lilac blossom. Each individual flower is joined to one central stem, each one depends on, and is supplied all its sustenance, from a single source. Further, I saw each individual flower facing outward in the manner of an individual witness to the world. True, some have much more prominent locations than others. There are those high in the sunlight, while others have a place deep in the shadows, almost lost to view. Yet they all make up one integral unit, each one occupying its appointed place.
Still more examination revealed widely differing stages of maturity in the members of the cluster. Some blossoms are quite large and completely open, others are smaller with petals not yet fully extended. Then there are those still in the bud–new Christians, if you will. A few are exposing their faces and opening their mouths for the first time. They are so refreshing.
Though the cluster is one complex bloom, I see there are some sub-groupings, distinct in themselves, yet all integral parts of the whole flower cluster. I see in these such things as the Sunday School or young people’s work; perhaps a ladies’ class or a missionary support group, each being a part of the whole local church.
Perhaps the thought occurring to me which I have meditated on most was the fact that every individual flower, small as it was, carried a bit of distinctive lilac scent. To be sure, by itself, there existed scarcely enough scent to be detected–yet, in the aggregate, combined with that of the whole cluster, the cumulative aroma is a sweet smelling savor, very pleasing to me; if to me, then surely to God.