Yesterday I felt this need to go and buy a rose, it was not something I had planned but just felt let by the Holy Spirit to go and buy a rose bush and so I went and they were all on special because it is really the wrong time to plant them, the only ones left were the diseased, not wanted cheap ones which were $9.99 instead of $24.99. I didn't know why I had to buy them, but I just did and I ended up buying five and then felt I needed to put aside an area in my garden as a special rose garden.After sharing with this to Jim this morning the word came as to why I had to buy roses. Roses are one of the hardest plants in my opinion to look after and care for, they take a lot of work. You have to prune them, you have to regularly cut them back and cut off diseased branches, they can be prickly and cause pain, they need regularly spraying to keep the bugs off them and then they may only flower once or twice perhaps more in a season for a seemingly short time compared to all the work that goes into making them flower. BUT when they do they are amazing and they can be so fragrant and beautiful that all the work doesn't matter for the joy that you get out of the beauty that they carry. And to me it was a word the Lord was giving me, that His people can be prickly, his people carry diseased branches that need pruning, often they are the ones that no one wants because they are the left overs of societies or have issues that people don't know how to handle and yet He is the true gardener that tends them and helps them grow to become something beautiful in its time. And if we take that time with people we will see the beauty they become.
Many people overlook seeing the beauty that could be there in those diseased roses that they give up and pick roses at a shop that have nothing wrong with them, but Jesus came for the ones that no body wanted, the despised, the rejected, those with flaws, the leftovers and he takes them home and tends to them and he loves them to a place of fruitfulness.
Lets be a people who love and tend to the people around us who may be a bit prickly at times, who may be showing more of their disease than their beauty but see beyond that to who they really are and to what is in them and help them to become all they are to become.
I have now planted these roses in my garden this afternoon helped by my husband and when he planted them, the first thing he said is that they make that area look homely and welcoming whereas before it was an empty area even though they are not at their best yet. Those people who God puts in our path to love, complete who we are to be, welcoming and homely.
