Today is the Memorial of St. Therese of Lisieux—“The Little Flower”—(only know because I saw it in last week’s bulletin). In coincidental (or divine) alignment of timing, I finished her autobiography this week. What I take from it, as have so many others, is the awareness that—however great or small—we all possess beauty to serve God’s will and bloom as Testaments to his Wonder and Love.
Whether rose, lily, or littlest flower in forgotten field; God creates each of us with our own inherent gifts, beauty, purpose, color, all to be revealed in accordance with our own timing for bloom.
St. Therese was made a saint, not for any spectacular achievement, but for her embracing of the “little flower” that she was: who believed and lived God’s love in simple acts and example which we—more so than the grand achievements of others—might likewise emulate and live. St. Therese showed in her example that even the “littlest flower” is created with deliberate intent and detail by God for the purpose of expressing His beauty and gifts to the world and that, even in a world that dismisses the small and seeks to cultivate a uniformity of human condition, God creates us purposefully with differences—thoughts, talents, purpose—and that to dismiss our design, and deny our inherent beauty—flower—we kill the Glory God designed to manifest and bloom from us.
We are not all the same flower. God does not intend for us to be. We should not compare the blessings of our beauty and purpose to that of others.
We are each our own unique and deliberate creation. We are each made for an intended purpose. Desire not to bloom and grow as another but to bloom as we are meant. We should live receptive to God’s signs and seek to express the gifts that are within us—in our own mediums of beauty, gifts, and time for bloom.
The world and God need “little flowers” ever as much as the lily and rose. Be and bloom as the living gift in which each of us are made. Uniformity kills the purposeful variety God created for this world to express and inspire Wonder for his Glory.