I learned  from my mother when I was fifteen how creativity can bring hope out of tragedy and the power of recovery in the midst of falling.

After a devastating fire that wiped us out except for the clothes on our backs, my father and I were returning with supplies through the woods from a distant village and found my mother had arranged for a lunch on a log in the middle of which she had set a rusty tin can filled with wild flowers.

That symbolized her story, and it became mine; and with it I participate in the Jesus story.  In the midst of sadness and loss there is to be found joy; in the midst of tragedy hope.

Do you have any wild flowers in a rusty tin can not far from your smoking ruins?

- Reuel Howe