The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. Isaiah 35:1.
“Who’s your governor?” I asked the Big Bend park ranger on November 6.
He looked at me puzzled.
“Yesterday was election day. Who won?” I asked again.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t listened to the news, but it doesn’t matter. Life goes on.”
A grizzly old man with a long gray beard who probably belonged to the burro tied outside the headquarters interjected himself into this conversation. “The donkey told me all the news I need to know. With his first bray this morning, he said it is the dawn of a new day.”
As far as one can see in Southwest Texas, sharp, sheer canyon walls of many colors stretch between the blue of the sky and the sandy gold of the desert floor. It is a land void of cell phone towers and newspapers. With a satellite dish, TV signals will come in and most public places display pay telephones. The voice message at park headquarters begins, “You have reached Big Bend National Park. If this is an emergency, press nine now.” In other words, this immense expanse of terra firma on the Rio Grande River across from Mexico remains a place isolated from the rest of the world. To be there, a person must make a conscious effort to drive from the nearest town a hundred miles away.
This vast desert called Chihuahuan doesn’t resemble a sandy beach. In places outside the park, ranches still struggle to raise cattle. When goats have been introduced on hillsides, they have often overgrazed the land by eating all of the limited grasses and roots, leaving only stumpy cedar brush which nothing seems to kill.
With an annual rainfall of a mere ten inches, cactus abounds. Wind blows. Sand coats the man-made objects.
But when it rains, even less than an inch, the desert blooms. The devil’s walking stick which appears dead coats itself in tiny green leaves. The brush turns a vivid green. Yet one hardly notices these changes because the purple sage commands all the attention. The usually unnoticed silver gray bushes burst forth with hundreds of purple blooms ranging in color from pale pink to deep purple. The mostly lilac to lavender shades carpet the hillsides and valleys.
There are no signs to explain this phenomenon. The flowers themselves do not speak nor preach nor exhort nor put down their neighbors, but the explosion of color everywhere engulfs all in their midst. Within a week, without more rainfall, the flowers drop off and the momentarily spectacular bushes blend back into the desert sameness.
Like the rarity of rain in Southwest Texas, Christmas comes but once a year. Yet, like the purple sage, we Christians should radiate the joy and hope and promise that comes with this celebration of Christ’s birth. When we truly absorb the message of Christmas within us, we, too, become a living testimony without ever opening our mouths.
Unlike purple sage which blooms only with the rain, however, Christians can perpetuate the blessings of this holy season not only for themselves, but also for all with whom they come in contact every day all year long. For when we carry the spirit of Christmas with us always, we can make a difference, just as the purple sage did for me, as we go about our daily routines. Then truly, it is the dawn of a new day.
2002
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