The heavens declare the glory of God. Psalm 19:1

Original photo by Cecilia Marie Pullian

In my Daily Bread devotional for today, Patricia Raybon wrote about Alex Smalley, a British researching studying awe inspiring weather events. According to Smalley, a stunning sunrise, or sunset can improve mood, increase positive emotions, and decrease stress. “When you see something vast and overwhelming or something that produces this feeling of awe, your own problems can feel diminished and so you don’t worry so much about them.”

This reminded me of another quote I read years ago.

Sherlock Holmes said flowers were not necessary to life. They were an embellishment given to us from a compassionate God (from The Adventure of the Naval Treaty by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

Isn’t that true? Sunsets, sunrises, blossoms, green fields, gurgling brooks, blue oceans, and lakes enhance the beauty of our world and lift our spirits—lifting them up towards heaven, towards God.

God has blessed me in the last stage of my life with a wonderful husband, family, church family, friends and a beautiful place to live.

Our house is situated in such a way as to allow me to watch both sunrises and sunsets from my front windows or porch. At other times of the day, I enjoy the lush vista of the surrounding countryside. Further embellishments to this life for which I am so thankful, especially after the many difficult preceding years.

There will be more difficulties to come, but there will also be those special gifts of encouragement, love and compassion sprinkled in when I need them most. Scripture verses, words from a kind friend, flowers, sunrises, and sunsets.

Thank you, Lord, for giving us embellishments to soften the hardness of this life. Amen.

 

Embellishments or Thorns?

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
 The Adventures of the Naval Treaty ― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

After owning and managing a flower shop for ten years, flowers were not an embellishment to my life. They were a means to an end and represented the stress that accompanies small business ownership. I did not see beautiful blooms or notice their sweet fragrance. They represented hours of standing ankle deep in floral debris creating Something Spectacular while answering phones, taking orders, organizing deliveries, and assisting walk in customers. When the holidays ended, I did not want to celebrate anything except the chance to shower and go to bed.

I have been out of the floral business for eleven years and now have the benefit of hindsight. While working in the shop I was surrounded with beauty, but I saw mostly thorns. I failed to understand that the blossoms are much larger than the thorns, and if we stand in the right position – in faith and trust in Him – we won't see the thorns at all.

But should one poke me, God will either heal me, or give me the strength to bear the pain. Either way, I gain hope from the flowers, sunrises, sunsets, spring rains, rainbows, birdsong, blue skies, and green trees, all of God's miraculous embellishments. 

Jesus said as much in His Sermon on the Mount, “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these. Now, if God clothe in this manner the grass that is to-day in the field and to-morrow is cast into the oven: how much more you, O ye of little faith?” Luke 12:27-28