When the Desert Blooms
In March 2019, southern California’s desert experienced what is called a super-bloom. You see, when the desert blooms, it goes all out. It’s not just a few flowers here and a few there, half-hearted and partially hidden. Oh no, when the desert blooms, it does it abundantly. And this past spring, it was so abundant that the super-bloom could be seen from space! Here’s one of the pictures of it:
This was a rare super-bloom, created by the perfect storm of what individually are two quite harsh and undesirable conditions. First, these plants have to have prolonged dormancy, as in many wildflower seeds must remain asleep through many seasons and decide to wake up at roughly the same time after a long hibernation. So, all these flowers stayed dormant for years, and didn’t bloom for years, and then decided to all bloom again at the same time. The other major factor was that southern California had an extra-long rainy season, followed by an unusually cold winter which locked the moisture in. So, plants that don’t bloom for years combined with extra rain and extra cold (nothing there that sounds good), and yet they produce this super-bloom of flowers in the desert. They create this beautiful picture of joy, unabashed joy. The poet John Keats wrote “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
The above picture gives a visual for Isaiah 35. The prophet begins the chapter describing how the desert experiences joy and blooms, “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” The picture above is what that looks like. The desert isn’t really a place you think about blooming and blossoms, you tend to think sand and cacti and barrenness, but here it is, definitely not always barren. Yet, it makes this chapter’s placement in Isaiah quite fitting. You see, Isaiah chapter 35 appears out of place from its surrounding chapters. Chapters 34 and 36 are not sunshine and rainbows, or flowers. Chapter 34 is about judgment and desert creatures meeting with hyenas. Chapter 36 is about Assyria attacking and conquering Judah. Yet here in the middle is this chapter, which is just these ten verses, and it’s about flowers in the desert and rejoicing in the wilderness. This chapter doesn’t make sense in its context. It interrupts the desolation going on around it. It’s as if the Divine intentionally disrupted the tale of woe and despair with a much-need word and image of joy that couldn’t wait until it might make more sense. This picture of beauty in the desert refuses to wait until things are better. And so in the midst of a story of desolation and wilderness, here is chapter 35 with a chorus of creation saying to one another, “Be strong. Do not fear. Here is your God.”