Fireweed Imaginative Prayer

I want you to imagine that you are a flower… but not just any flower… you are a fireweed flower.

When you bloom, you perch yourself off a 4-foot stalk to cascade your purplish-pink beauty around you.

But you aren’t blooming right now.

There was a recent fire and now you live in a place with fire-darkened tree skeletons who leafless arms reach the sky.

You can hear the wind creak through the spindly branches.

All around you if feels dark and eerie.

The ground is covered in ash and soot and it doesn’t feel like there is much life around you.

But this is the place that you like to grow the most.

God gave you a gift… the ability to bring forth new life in places that are burnt and ashy and dark.

Even though your stalk, the place you normally perch yourself, burned in the fire, you didn’t feel it.

Deep within the ground, you have a special root system called rhizomes that keeps you connected and helps you spread new life, forming a strong network of plants all around you.

You also have wispy hairs on your seeds that carry you in the wind each year to plant you in places that are dark, ashy, and barren.

You nestle into the ashy barren soil.

You suck up all the nutrients from the water and the sun.

You slowly reach up to the sky.

You pop up all around, poking out of the soil and begin to grow your long tall stalk along with buds that perch off the end of it.

When your buds break open, you sparkle with your purplish-pink flowers and invite all the creatures to come back and join you.

The bees and butterflies drink your nectar.

The birds jostle you when they swoop down to catch insects.

You offer the moose, bears, and deer your flowery stalks for food.

Another gift you have to offer is you help the soil stay together and prevent it from eroding.

It’s like your arms nestled deep within the ground, holding this sparse, lifeless place together.

How do you see your story in the story of the fireweed?

Where do you sense God in this story?

What do you think God needs you to hear or know from this story?