Yesterday, Dorothy, Ellisa, and I took a road trip to Brenham to see the Bluebonnets on a perfect blue-sky Spring day.
It’s always nostalgic to drive past Cy-Fair High School from which I graduated back in the 1900s.
I grew up with the children of parents named Jones, Huffmeister, Telge, and Hegar. I thought of them as I passed the roads named after them. Those roads are paved with many memories. The names on the street sign exits off Highway 290 lead me back to my schoolmates and their parents who shaped this country land, land which is now covered with steel, concrete, and a few manmade lakes lined with modern homes and brick fences.
The Nine Bar Ranch has been covered by shopping centers, restaurants, and the Outlet Mall. The rice farms, like the one Zora Brown’s father owned, are blanketed with houses all of which look the same. Hot Wells is no longer the place to swim, eat, party, and dance. It is now a gun club and shooting range. Soon, I heard that it too will be sold to a developer.
Weiser Airport is no more. Concrete pads have become runways for tilt-up walls to support commercial warehouses and office buildings.
This area was once on the far west outskirts of Houston. Now, it looks like the center of a sprawling city. Much has changed in the name of progress. Houston has flowered and grown into something different than it once was.
In spending time with Dorothy and Ellisa on our drive to Brenham, we saw magnificent bluebonnets. Their beauty cascading down the slopes on either side of the highway and over the rolling hills of ranches and farms that reminded me some things never change.
The bluebonnets are gone after a few weeks and return every year in similar magnificence and beauty.
To conclude our outing, we broke bread at my cousins’ fabulous restaurant Brossa’s Cibo e Vino on Market Street in Brenham. I am posting a photo of our lunch together.
God is like the return of the bluebonnets each year. God does not change. But we do change and need to grow spiritually too. God returns to us when we need Him in prayer. We return to Him for help as we struggle and grow in our walks of faith. That relationship is beautiful as well. It mirrors the beauty and wonder of the Texas bluebonnets.
Another thing that does not change is the joy of a grandparent in taking a grandchild on a trip to see the bluebonnets along Highway 290. To see a grandchild frolicking among the bluebonnets swaying in the winds of April on a sunny April day.
It is my hope and prayer that I, our granddaughter, Ellisa, and all children of God continue to grow and flower in God’s Kingdom now and forever. We may all disappear in the cycle of earthly life like that of the bluebonnets. If we continue to grow in Christ and put our faith in God, I know our spirits will one day fully bloom and forever be a part of the beauty and wonder of His heavenly Kingdom.
God has spoken in Scripture about growing in his Kingdom.
Hosea 14:5-6
I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.
1 Peter 1:23-24
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.”
Let us pray together.
Dear God, in prayer I thank You for the flowers of Spring especially the bluebonnets with all their beauty and glory.
I thank You, God, for all the beauty and glory of Your Kingdom which draws me nearer and nearer to You on the blessed earth.
God, may I turn my life and love to You as a flower turns to face You for warmth, strength, and light in times of darkness.
God, please help me grow and flower in Your Kingdom each and every day. In my death may I be risen to sit beside You in all the splendor and wonder of Your creation. Amen
If you like this prayer, please share.
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Jack H. Emmott is a Senior Counsel of Gray, Reed & McGraw, LLP, a 145-lawyer full-service firm in Houston, Dallas, and Waco, Texas, a Board-Certified Family Law and Master Credentialed Collaborative Law Professional Divorce Attorney, Mediator, Author, Entrepreneur, and Inspirational Speaker. For more information about Jack or his latest book, Bending Angels: Living Messengers of God’s Love, go to the Bending Angel website.
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