What an odd painting.Take the flower out and what do you have? Night sky, dim moon and a bare lifeless tree.Who even notices flowers at night ?If your friend has a rose garden, do you pick up a flashlight and go look as you leave? No, you rush to the car to get out of the dark. Night is frightful.
The solitary flower reminds me of a touching O'Henry story, "The Last Leaf." I can see the lonely, swollen eyed woman in her 30s whose husband has just left her. She is lamenting as she gazes out the winter window to the tree that has lost all its leaves but one at the top. In her desperation she yells to the sky;" if that leaf is still there tomorrow, I will know that all is not lost."Her elderly, white haired upstairs neighbor has heard it all and when the apartment complex is in sleep mode, he creeps out with his ladder, climbs to the top of that tree and tightly ties the last leaf to the branch.This night's wind will not blow it away.
The next morning, she looks out to the miracle, her leaf clings, she will be O.K. She will also find out later that the old man was found under tree where he had fallen to his death.
Another movie scene comes to mind: in the movie "Unbroken", we visit the story of an Olympic runner of the 1936 Olympics who winds up in the Air Force in World War 2.In 1943, His plane is shot down, he spends 47 days alone on a raft and when rescued, it is by Japanese forces who put him in a prison in Tokyo.The men there are starved, beaten and Loius Zamperini, being an American sports hero, is singled out for special cruelty. He survives unbroken. But is he ?
The movie sequel "Unbroken, Road to Redemption" shows life after he gets home: no job, anger boiling over his treatment, sleepless, nightmare filled nights and then heavy drinking.But he goes to a Billy Graham Crusade and finally, finally let's the Light in. Let's Christ into his heart.He is transformed.
In 1950, he goes back to Japan to that same camp where now his former tormentors are kneeling on the floor, heads bowed, captives themselves. In a touching moment, one of the kneeling men looks up and Louis slowly goes to him, lifts him up and says," It's O.K. It's O.K.", then another , then another until he has assured each man of his forgiveness in these simple words; "It's O.K."
To the lonely girl on the playground, It's O.K.", From a Grandma baking biscuits, the auntie giving love, the ancestors paying visits, "It's O.K."
That is what that small purple flower whispers:" It's O.K. It will always be O.K."
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