The Flowers of Life

The flower fadeth but the Word of God…

They were pretty yellow roses that would bloom late in July. The yellow roses only lasted one day then another yellow rose more beautiful that day than the day before. But after the season of pretty yellow roses the cactus resorted back to their original state with the penetrating and painful needles. It only took one touch and the needle caused excruciating pain and suffering. So is life as we go through the gardens of our soul and our experiences under the sun.

It,s two o’clock in the morning and the dreams want come. I remember the late nights and the early mornings when I found myself out in the night, looking for a listening ear, a shared moment or maybe a tender and understanding heart. The song writer said “you made me leave my happy home”, but if it was happy why in the name of Aunt Minnie are you at the Fox Hole or the Living Room, drowning out your yester years with a little JB on the rocks kick back with water? The Word of God said I was to leave and cleave (Genesis 2:24) and the two would become one. But an intruder somehow and someway gain entry into your garden and entices you with the pretty yellow roses and the next thing you know the forever green cactus are without flowers until next year. After many years and many tears, you find out that so goes the cycle of life. The struggles, the trials and tribulations and yes the challenges of life will and can make you better or bitter. What’s so strange and difficult to understand is about the time you finally learn the rules of the game of life, the game is nearly over and there is no reset button, no do over and not enough time left to correct yesterday’s wrongs, today.

My spiritual mentor would always refer me to the Word of God which says that Love has waxed cold (Matthew 24:12) . He would explain how you had to build your life “line upon line (Isaiah 28:10) and precepts upon precept.” But the way to peace, joy and yes even grace can be found on the narrow road as broad is the way to destruction and despair. Its seems so unfair that it takes you nearly fifty years to digest the lines, the precepts and the WORD and then you learn you are only promised three score years and ten and check mate. “You will be fifty years old before what I am telling you sinks in,” my grandfather would tell my mother when she was a child. Mom would later tell me that her father was “right.” The life lessons he tried to instill and deposit to her account would prove true and come back to her remembrance, but only after the flowers of life had bloom and failed to the ground, to be forever crushed to the mother earth.

The Emmanuel Nine, (Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23) means, God With Us) the Confederate Flag; the Civil War or the War Between The States; the increase in the homicide rates in our cities from sea to shining sea and a people that have seem to lost their way takes me back to there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Stevie Wonder’s lyrics in one of his heart felt songs says “I got to find me a place in the Sun (Son)” appears to be most appropriate for a world that has been turned upside down, where wrong is right and day is night and the blood flows in the street. And it “grieved God that he ever made man because his thoughts were evil continuously”. Surely that’s why God gave us a “place in the sun (Son).