The Bulbs of Haarlem

In 1637, the Dutch city of Haarlem was gripped by tulip fever. Fortunes changed hands over small, wrinkled bulbs that looked like dried onions. A single Semper Augustus bulb — ugly, papery, and lifeless — sold for more than a grand canal house. Skeptics mocked the buyers. How could anyone pay a fortune for something so plain?

But the growers of Haarlem understood what the skeptics could not see. They had watched those withered husks split open in dark soil and produce flowers of staggering beauty — petals streaked with crimson and white, forms so elegant that artists traveled from across Europe just to paint them. The bulb bore no resemblance to what it became. You could dissect it completely and never find the flower hidden inside.

Paul knew his Corinthian readers would ask the same skeptic's question: "With what kind of body will they come?" They looked at burial and saw only decay. So Paul pointed them to the garden. A bare grain of wheat enters the ground looking nothing like the green stalk and golden head it becomes. God gives it a body as He has determined — utterly new, yet connected to what was planted.

The Almighty does not recycle our frailty. He transforms it. What goes into the ground perishable, dishonored, and weak is raised imperishable, glorious, and powerful. Like those Haarlem bulbs, the plainness of what is buried tells you nothing about the magnificence of what is coming.