Flowers, Beauty and Grace

My African violet has three to four new purplish violet tinted blossoms this week and to great surprise the peace plant in my office has grown a new white blossom as well. It just opened today. Flowers, beautiful, simple, and fragile. Purple for royalty, white for purity and peace. Something about them calls out, cries out. Life and beauty shown and given unto me. A token of love and kindness.

I Corinthians 3:6 reads "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow."

Flowers, new life, hope and great beauty can bring healing. It is a gift that can touch deeply or enrage. I've heard many a story from my friend, Michelle, the florist, about how not everyone is happy to get flowers. Some figure all they have to do is send a nice bouquet or arrangement to smooth over an offense. No change in behavior or I'm sorry, just the beautiful bouquet.

What about when the person sending the flowers has every right to be indignant or enraged themselves? I wonder how many of us send flowers as a token of kindness when we are the one offended? Does anyone? I'm not talking about those who pacify or enable people in order to hold onto them because they are co-dependent. What I am talking about is GRACE.

Grace defined as: mercy, favor, pardon; the unmerited will and favor shown to us from God. In fact, the word is used in the Bible over 100 times. Christianity would not be what it is or have the power to effect mankind the way it does, if it was not for God's grace. It is because of this, that we are able to be forgiven and share eternity with God as His children.

It is this same grace and kindness shown unto me, when God causes beautiful flowers to blossom in my own home. Home, the very place where I have stewed in anger over the way He does things, the people he chooses to bless or not, and those people or situations He appears to leave unchanged and broken. Many of which I simply and can not for the life of me understand, at all, nor one bit.

Yet, I do know one thing, the flowers are simply beautiful and somehow they touched me. "His mercies are new every morning."(Lamentations 3:22-23) May we all glean more insight and develop a greater appreciation for just how much He gives, especially when we are the ones who should be saying, "I'm sorry."