After several drought years, California has been deluged with rain adding up to one of the wettest winters on record.  The rainfall has filled the empty reservoirs and swollen the creeks and rivers.  The parched hillsides and canyons that sweltered last summer and sent fire warnings throughout the state are now dazzling eyes with vibrant green.

Wonder of wonders!  The arid desert areas and the thirsty hills have burst into glorious bloom.  Color everywhere!  Following the rains, vivid yellows, poppy oranges, blues, and purples are turning the barren browns into vistas of blossoms, causing traffic to stop on the freeways so drivers can snap cell-phone pictures of the swaths of outrageous color.

Who knew?  Under the wasteland of drought, deep beneath the char of grassfires, lay seeds.  Seeds everywhere—poppy seeds, mustard, goldfield, and phlox seeds have turned into carpets of color.  This amazing season of super bloom can even be seen from satellites that are sending back images to immortalize this fleeting wonder.

Warnings are being sent now asking tourists not to strike out through the fields and hillsides and trample the flowers before they have a chance to run their course and deposit their seeds onto ground that will hopefully hold them through other dry spells.

Ah, to know the seeds are there.  To know that in the barren places and in desert lands there are seeds.  To see proof that no matter how dry the days, how long the drought, there are seeds. To see with our own eyes that even through the fires, seeds remain, and come spring rains, the desert will flower.  The streams of mercy and the reservoirs of grace will fill with life-giving water once more, and the “desert will blossom like a rose”!

Today watching the aerial photos of California in bloom, my soul is saying, “Yes!”  The rains will come.  The thirsty places will flourish again. The seeds are just waiting for the rain.