Pastor's Note

NOT SO WILD!
June 10th, 2007

As I drive, I enjoy looking at the wild flowers that grow in ditches or elsewhere along the side of the road. Some are quite striking as they come up without cultivation or human planting. But I have been asking myself what makes a wild flower wild.
I was at my sister’s house and her husband showed me an area where he had ‘planted’ wild flowers. He found a canister of wild flower seeds in a store and proceeded to disperse the seeds in a corner area of the yard. Most of the seeds took root; the area was blooming with purple, yellow, and white flowers. They were wild in variety, but my brother-in-law had planted them.
So what makes something wild? Usually wild plants grow on their own, produce flowers in untilled areas, and have not been bred to bloom big flowers for long durations. (Usually wild flower blooms are smaller than domestic counterparts, often blooming for shorter periods of time.) So even if my brother-in-law spread some flower seeds, they remained basically wild.
Use of the word ‘wild,’ however, sounds a bit sinister or dangerous, like wild animals. But wild can simply mean that they grow by God’s plan and not by a human plan. It may mean that wild flowers are extra gifts to us, just to be enjoyed without our having to plant them. Wild means they have an independence from some of our ‘civilization.’
Humans have been able to domesticate many plants. Most people have wonderful gardens with very attractive flowers. But it’s nice once it a while to know that there are plants and other living things beyond our control.