More Than Cherry Blossoms

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been fascinated by cherry blossoms. I remember looking at photographs of Japan during cherry blossom season and wondering what it must feel like to sit beneath those trees while thousands of pink petals drifted gently through the air. Families would gather under the blossoms with picnic baskets, children would laugh, couples would walk hand in hand, and for a few short weeks the whole country seemed wrapped in pink. I dreamed of that tree long before I ever understood why. I used to tell myself that wherever I settled one day, I wanted a huge cherry blossom tree in my yard. There is something almost magical about them. Yet perhaps that is also what makes them bittersweet. Cherry blossoms bloom for only a brief moment. Then, almost as quickly as they arrived, the petals fall. The branches that looked so alive become bare again, waiting another year for their beauty to return. Scripture doesn't shy away from that image. As we read in 1 Peter, "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever." 1 Peter 1:24-25 Even glory, the Bible says, has a season. It withers like the blossoms do. The older I've become, the more I've realized how much of life resembles cherry blossoms. Youth fades. Success comes and goes. Health changes. Children grow up. Even the happiest seasons eventually give way to another. We spend so much of our lives chasing beautiful moments, forgetting that beautiful moments were never meant to hold us together. I think Solomon understood that ache better than anyone. He writes in Ecclesiastes, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart." Ecclesiastes 3:11 He names both halves of the tension in one breath — the beauty really is real, and still it was never going to be enough, because we were made with eternity already lodged in us. Even the ache I felt looking at those photographs of Japan — that longing for something lasting, wrapped in something so fleeting — was never really about the flowers. It was eternity, tugging at a child's heart, long before I had words for it. Then I think of another tree, one the Psalms describe. "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." Psalm 1:3 Notice what's missing from that description. No mention of blossoms. No mention of a single dazzling season. Just roots, a stream, and a leaf that doesn't wither. God never promised us a life that would bloom for a few weeks each year. He invites us to become something far deeper. Not a tree admired because of its blossoms, but a tree sustained by its roots. Cherry blossoms are beautiful because of what everyone can see. The tree in Psalm 1 is beautiful because of what no one sees. Its roots. Long before fruit appears on its branches, something unseen is happening beneath the ground. The roots are drawing life from the stream. Jeremiah paints almost the same picture, but he tells us why the roots matter so much. "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." Jeremiah 17:7-8 It isn't that the drought never comes. It's that the tree with deep roots doesn't have to be afraid when it does. That is how God often works in us. The deepest work He does is hidden. No applause. No recognition. Just quiet faithfulness — roots holding steady through a drought no one else can see, so that when the heat comes, the leaves stay green anyway. The world celebrates blossoms. God cultivates roots. And perhaps that is why my love for cherry blossoms has changed over the years. I still hope to see Japan in spring one day. I would still love to sit beneath those soft pink petals as they dance in the wind. Even that longing has a verse of its own. Song of Solomon describes spring arriving like this: "For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come." Song of Solomon 2:11-12 Maybe that's closer to what I felt as a child than I realized — that ache for spring wasn't only about a tree in Japan. It was a small, early hunger for the season when God makes all things new. But if I never have a cherry blossom tree in my garden, I hope I become the tree described in Psalm 1. A life whose strength is not found in the beauty of one season, but in roots that run deep into Christ. Because blossoms come and go. But roots remain. And in the end, it is the roots — not the blossoms — that determine whether a tree will still be standing after every season has passed.