1 Thessalonians 1:3

Do you remember those beautiful yards of yesterday? We never called them lawns, and landscaping was not professional, but by pure imagination. Flowers were everywhere, and in no particular order. A flower was planted because this was a “good spot” to put it. A flowerpot was any kind of available container; an old bucket, even an old shoe worked well. These yards were a little bit of heaven where many of us played and grew up. I think it is because they were planted by people who still looked for the beautiful, and believed if you seek it, you will find it.

I think that my Grandmother planted flowers in any empty container that she could find. In those days flowers were shared. You got your “slip” (start) from a relative or friend; and each pot became a conversation piece about someone’s life. They were even handed down from generation to generation like a sacred trust.

Longfellow called flowers “Stars of the earth,” of which he said, “These golden flowers are emblems of our own great resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.” To walk among the flowers is to walk with God in paradise on earth. If they could sing, what a majestic choir it would be. We could learn worship from them. They do not compete for attention, but constantly look up to their creator. Their heads may get pushed down by the storms, but never stay down.

When God put His signature on creation, He must have written it with flowers. They greet the newborn baby, tremble in the hands of the nervous bride, and are the blanket by which we tearfully tuck our loved one in on the night before their resurrection.

Believers have always expressed their own faith with flowers. Some will remember the song: “Gathering flowers for the Master’s bouquet, beautiful flowers that will never decay. Gathered by angels and carried away, forever to bloom in the Master’s bouquet.”

Even our Lord was described as the lily of the valley, and the Rose of Sharon. Those were flowers in some of life’s more difficult places that remind us that we are never alone, but always in the presence of the one who placed them there.