Rose Petals

I am not a gardener. In fact, I have a brown thumb. I get it honestly...a gene straight from my mother. My sister got my father's green thumb. So she and my father would probably have never embarked on the flower petal adventure I'm about to describe. They would have known better.

But despite my brown thumb, I have a rose bush in my front yard that has done incredibly well this spring. It constantly has beautiful roses on it. I can take no credit for it, as I do nothing to make it grow. Yesterday, I was in the front yard enjoying my beautiful flowers and relishing in their wonderful fragrance. I picked up a few rose petals off the ground. They still smelled so good. I thought to myself...if I collect some of these and put them in a bowl in my kitchen, the kitchen will smell like roses! Boy was I wrong. No wonderful scent came from the rose petals. They just withered. They changed from something beautiful to something brown and dead.

I realized that apart from their source the rose petals lose their beauty, their fragrance, and their purpose. They change from something beautiful that brings great joy to something ugly that must be thrown away. Apart from the rose bush, the rose petals die.

Just like people. Apart from our source, God, we wither, we lose our beauty, we lose our fragrance, we have no purpose. Eventually we will die. This is what Jesus was talking about when he said,

"I am the vine. You are the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:5

Nothing...apart from Him I can do nothing! Why is it so hard for me to remember that? Why do I go through a whole week failing to pick up the Word of God to study it? Why do I go through a whole week failing to memorize and meditate on Scripture? Why do I make choices that drive me further apart from Him? Why do I put things into my body and mind that push me further away? God promises in His word that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. (James 4:8).

Why do I spend so much of my time trying to be apart from Him then? Why do I insist on trying to gather my life as rose petals in that bowl on my kitchen counter? Why am I not fighting to stay connected to the vine?????

I want to be fragrant. I want to be beautiful. I want to be connected to the vine! That is my prayer. That is my earnest plea.