This picture reminds me of life! There have been many times that I have been overcome with life. I allow my mind to get so caught up in what is swirling like a winter blizzard around me that I take my eyes off Him who holds me. After awhile, when my eyes have been on the struggles far too long, I forget He holds me and then I start focusing on the rottenness and death lying around me. Thankfully God has placed the appropriate people in my life to help guide me back to where my focus should be...Him. Once I put my eyes back on Him, HOPE springs anew in me and I become like that little flower pushing up through the death and decay I allowed to become dominate for awhile. Sometimes it takes death and decay to overwhelm us in order for us to see life. God allows us to go through suffering, pain and loss so we can learn of Him and know pure joy and all for His glory. 

Hannah Hurnard said in "Mountains of Spices," "There is absolutely no experience, however terrible, or heartbreaking, or unjust, or cruel, or evil, which you can meet in the course of your earthly life, that can harm you if you but let Me teach you how to accept it with joy; and to react to it triumphantly as I did myself, with love and forgiveness and with willingness to bear the results of wrong done by others. Every trial, every test, every difficulty and seemingly wrong experience through which you may have to pass, is only another opportunity granted to you of conquering an evil thing and bringing out of it something to the lasting praise and glory of God.”

My prayer is that of David in the Psalm 51:10, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." I want to be like the little flower piercing through the decay and spring forth with hope and joy for His glory!