Flowers

The Space Between the Flowers

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  Genesis 2:8 KJV

“What are you doing?!” I shouted at my friend who had weeding in the perennial garden along the back wall.

“Look I pulled all the weeds out!” he said. I shook my head in amazement at the six feet of flower bed that now lay completely devoid of growth of any kind.

“But you pulled everything else out too. Where are the flowers?” I asked in confusion.

“I’m sorry there were so many weeds that I couldn’t tell which ones were the flowers.” He said sorrowfully.

Galaxy phone june 2013 090

My fault had been in allowing the weeds to get so thick that it had become impossible to pull them out.  I had forgotten that a garden grows best when there is a space around the flowers.

Maybe that is why we sometimes feel alone and God seems silent. He has not forgotten us, but in the garden that is our soul He has chosen to make some space between the flowers. He pulls out and separates things from our lives so that we will bloom our brightest and most brilliant colors when the season is just right.

The Fragrance of the Perfume

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments

Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. John 12:3 NKJV

While Hollywood has generally given us the impression that Mary was a young beautiful woman; that may not have been the reality. In that time even poor young beautiful women would have been married and Mary was not poor. While we do not know Mary’s age it seems possible that she and Martha were both widows, living with their brother Lazarus. That would give us an entirely different view than the film version. In this scene we meet a Mary who kept all her savings in that perfume jar. It acted as something of a retirement account. As she grew older with no marital prospects, no way to work or even the right to own property that perfume was all she had besides the kindness of her brother. She was presenting that gift in a single defining moment as her worship and expression of love to the Lord Jesus.

selective focus photography of pink flowers

Photo by Abby Chung on Pexels.com

As the fragrance filled the room people began one by one to realize how exorbitant and yes even a little crazy what Mary was doing really was! Her family and friends were shocked but silent. Then one by one the disciples, beginning with Judas, began to protest. “Why wasn’t this sold …and given to the poor?”

But Jesus knew Mary’s heart and while she remained silently at His feet He defended her. Today we have little to describe how Peter or John, Andrew or Phillip worshiped, but Mary’s gift is still remembered. After 2,000 years, her perfume continues to fill each of our rooms with its fragrance!

The Garden of the King

/ pastorpete51 / 4 Comments

It is finally really summer and my Tiger Lilies and Shrub Roses are busy giving God glory with their soundless shouts of praise. They do not worry who has been planted near them or what could happen to them tomorrow. They are simply delighted with each day given. I believe that it is because somewhere written in their DNA is the knowledge that they are blooming in the garden of the King!