Fresh Cut!

I picked these fresh cut zinnias up at the farmers market yesterday...they sell lovely fresh cut flowers all summer, and most of the time I can't resist taking home a bouquet.  Cut flowers are a great luxury because you can bring the garden indoors.....for a while.  But in the end, even in water, the flowers wither and die without the soil and roots.  It reminds me of the Parable of the Sower.  And unlike the planted flower, these flowers cannot grow, cannot produce more flowers, or seeds for future plants.  So cut flowers are a nice example of our withering earthly life, as well as a nice example of how a Christian's spiritual life is quite the opposite...as we are always growing when we have the Root of Jesse, the good ground, the Sun of Righteousness, and watered by the Word.

By C.H. Spurgeon:  Life Proved by Growth

Excerpt from “Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden”

“Where there is life there will be growth, and if grace be true, it will surely increase.  A painted flower keepeth always at the same pitch and stature; the artist may bestow beauty upon it, but he cannot bestow life.  A painted child will be as little ten years hence as it is now.” - Thomas Manton

What need there is to observe the wide distinction between the picture and the living thing!  Of painted likenesses of Christians we have more than enough; nor is the manufacture of portraits a difficult operation: what we want is the real thing and not the artistic imitation.  Manton saith well that growth is the test. 

Reader, how do you stand under this test?  Come, search yourself, and  see whether you are adding to your faith, courage; and to courage, brotherly kindess; and to brotherly kindess, love.  If there be no growth, it may be, nay, surely it must be, that you are not a child born into the family of God, but a pretty picture, which may adorn a room, but which cannot perform any of the actions of life.  

*Well, my assistant caught wind of my being out and about with my camera, and decided to crash the photo session because she was taking the "stop and smell the roses" part of Flower Week very literally.   She even tried to snuggle the Ball jar, which nearly tipped over... luckily I caught it before we had a mess on our paws!