A Parable About Illusion
The following story is found in Lillian Daniel’s book Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To: Spirituality without Stereotypes, Religion without Ranting…
When I was a child, my mother planned a big garden party. At the heart of her vision was that our backyard would be filled with blooming daffodils, which she had planted in anticipation of this party long before. But as the party date approached, the weather stayed cold and no daffodils were even close to blooming.
Yet on the day of the party, our lawn was filled with daffodils, just as she had dreamed.
The guests marveled at the springtime beauty of our yard, especially since no garden in the neighborhood had any springtime action like that.
But then after the guests went home, the daffodils drooped and my mother went through the yard carefully removing all the cut daffodils she had bought from the florist, that she had painstakingly attached to chopsticks with wire twist ties, that she had carefully stuck in the ground.
Those daffodils weren’t fake; they were just short-lived and flimsy, with no bulb under the earth to allow them to survive the rough weather. On the surface and for a short while, they looked like real daffodils but they didn’t have enough going on underneath to last.
They weren’t living. They weren’t rooted; they wilted early on because there was no oxygen to sustain them.
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I don’t want to give this story an application, but rather, I want to offer it for you to consider.
What does it say to you?
