Here’s another story about persistence in life that may also reveal something about the "mind of Christ:"

"My daughter kept calling. She'd say: ‘Mother, you must come see the daffodils before they’re over.’ I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. I'm not old, at least not old, old, but I don't particularly enjoy driving. Everyone is so rude and pushy these days. And in a hurry.

‘I'll come next Tuesday,’ I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and so I drove over to my daughter's. Plastic toys were strewn in the front yard, and a few pansies were blooming in a strip of dirt along the sidewalk. I walked into Carolyn's house and hugged my grandchildren. ‘Forget the daffodils, Carolyn!’ I said almost with relief. ‘The road is invisible in the clouds and fog, and there’s nothing in the world that I would rather see than you and these children.’

My daughter smiled calmly and with a touch of condescension and said, ‘We drive in this all the time, Mother.’

‘Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading for home!’ I assured her.

‘I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick up my car.’ She wasn't listening to me.

‘How far will we have to drive?’ I asked.

‘Just a few blocks.’ Carolyn said. ‘And I'll drive.’

We got into the car and drove off. After several minutes, it became apparent that something was afoot. ‘Where are we going? This isn't the way to the garage!’

‘We're going to the garage the long way,’ Carolyn smiled, ‘by way of the daffodils.’

‘Carolyn,’ I said sternly, as though she were 3 years old and was about to misbehave, ‘please turn around.’

‘It's all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience.’

After about 20 minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, there was a hand-lettered sign that read, ‘Daffodil Garden.’ We got out of the car and we each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then we turned a corner of the path, and I looked up and gasped.

Before me lay the most glorious sight. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns - great ribbons of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron and butter yellow. Each different-colored variety was planted as a group so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

‘But who has done this?’ I asked Carolyn.

‘It's just one woman,’ Carolyn answered. ‘She lives on the property. That's her home.’ Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the patio, we saw a poster.

‘Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking’ was the headline. The first answer was a simple one: ‘50,000 bulbs,’ it read. The second answer was, ‘One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet and very little brain.’ The third answer was, ‘Began in 1958.’

There it was. The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than 40 years before, had begun - one bulb at a time - to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Still, just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world. This unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. She had created something of ineffable magnificence, beauty and inspiration.

‘It makes me sad in a way,’ I admitted to Carolyn. ‘What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal 35 or 40 years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!’ My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way.

‘Start tomorrow,’ she said.

‘I'll start today,’ I said."¹

The Daffodil Principle of this story is an important one: Start today - one step at a time - to change yourworld.

The Daffodil Principle is one of the really great principles of celebration: learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time, often just one baby-step at a time, learning to love the doing of the task and learning to use the available time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we discover that we can accomplish some pretty magnificent things. We can actually change the world.

That principle comes from the character and performance of the old lady herself who planted all those daffodils. It could more accurately be called "The Old Lady Principle."

But if we focus on the daffodils themselves then another, radically different principle appears, namely: It’s in dying that we gain life. Or, after every crucifixion, there's a resurrection. Or, in losing oneself, we truly find ourselves.

Jesus made that point both in his teaching and in his life, as our text in Philippians proclaims in the very majestic terms of "emptying himself" and "humbling himself." In his teaching, Jesus used a grain of wheat. He could have just as easily used a daffodil bulb. "Unless a [daffodil bulb] falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single [bulb]" (John 12:24). In the Philippians text, the apostle Paul interprets the life and death of Christ in a similar way, showing that Christ plunged into the soil of humanity, taking the form and likeness of a human being, and in that form died on the cross. God then exalted him and gave him a name above all other names.

So what’s Paul’s point? Just this: "Your attitude, my attitude, should be the same as that of Christ Jesus" (2:5).

You know, just when I think that humanity has fully explored the depths of depravity, gone about as low as it can go, someone ups the ante and I’m shaken again to the core of my being.

Did you know that a sniper subculture existed in our country? I didn't.

Did you know that the sniper's mantra, their motto, is "One shot, one kill"? I didn't.

Until Thursday someone was loose knocking men, women, and children down with a single shot – someone who thinks he's God. "I am God," were the words on the back side of the tarot Death card.

Here were predators who evidently feel that life is out of control for them, but by choosing their targets, and killing them, they’re able to exert control, if not over their own lives, over the lives – and deaths – of others.

It seems to me that we get one shot at life, and these guys were using it to take death shots at other people. They surrendered to evil; God calls us to surrender to good. They surrendered to despair; God calls us to awaken to hope. They surrendered to death; God calls us to celebrate life.

Here are people who dispense lethal death shots; God wants us to be someone who gives out wonderful life shots – shots of love, hope, encouragement, and joy – shots that blow people away, stop them alive, not dead, in their tracks. The "mind of Christ" not the "heart of darkness."

There’s both text and subtext in the Daffodil Principle. The text is this: Start today – one step at a time – to change your world – the world around you. It takes time – often lots of time; but it can be done. The subtext is this: You may die a little doing whatever you set out to do. But that's okay. Change and growth occur as the old is stripped away and the new is allowed to appear.

A woman living along a gravel road near a church, down a little path, spent her life creating something beautiful. In her case, it took several decades, 50,000 daffodil bulbs and the work of her hands and feet. But the impact of her efforts has inspired countless people to go and do likewise. Maybe they head out and plant their own daffodil bulbs. Or maybe they cultivate some other project with the capacity to bloom.

You think she didn't want to sleep in some morning? You think her back didn't ache at the end of the day? You think her knees didn't hurt when she knelt in the soil? You think she never thought about quitting? You think she didn’t feel like the Rutgers basketball team who were beaten by Yale in the firswt round of last year’s National Invitation Tournament – Yale hadn’t won a post season game in 107 years – until then? Until they beat Rutgers.²

To paraphrase Paul: "We should have the same attitude as was in that lady." She’s an example of what Christ did in living and dying among us. An example of "the mind of Christ" not the "heart of darkness."

The saying is true: "Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something, and together we can change the world."³

It's not too late for any of us. We can go out and plant something beautiful. Sure, it might be cold out there. And it might be dark. And the soil might be a little rocky – the conditions less than idea.

But people, like daffodils, were created to bloom. And as Christians, we were created to help not just ourselves but others bloom in all their glory. That’s "the mind of Christ."