On a garden tour I attended this summer, I learned about a plant called the moonflower. Believe it or not, this is a flower that only blooms at night under the light of the moon. Here’s how it is described on the Better Homes and Gardens website:
Moonflower is one of the most romantic plants you can grow in the garden. It’s a statuesque, ideal evening-garden plant bearing large trumpet-shape flowers that unfurl in the evening (or on overcast days) and stay open until the sun rises. Some are sweetly fragrant when open.
For some reason, that flower got me to thinking about how some of our gravest and most fearful moments hit us at night. How many times have we woken up with a start in the night in a panic, worried about an approaching deadline or an unresolved issue of some kind?
When that nighttime terror comes again, think of the moonflower. Like the moonflower blooming, Christ comes to us at night trumpeting the good news: “In the world you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
And like the romantic moonflower, our heavenly Father comes to us in love: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jeremiah 31:3).
And like the moonflower that stays open until sunrise, the Holy Spirit stays with us until the Son of God returns at the dawn of the Last Day to take us home to heaven with him. As Jesus said, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).
Like the often fragrant moonflower, what sweet joy our triune God offers us day and night to carry us through to eternity.
