Thoughts on a Flower

Today I was thinking about flowers...yes flowers.  (And yes, this may have something to do with the cold reminding me of an unfinished project which I really should start up again...)  While thinking about flowers, something interesting occurred to me.

Flowers hold a sense of beauty in our minds.  It doesn't matter the type of flower (except for maybe dandelions...) or the time or year, a flower always holds a certain level of beauty.  We use them for decoration, cutting them and placing them around our houses; for cosmetic purposes, placing them in our hair or on our clothing (I only do this in private...); for perfume, taking their scents to make ourselves smell more beautiful.

But as beautiful as flowers are, they actually have a real purpose for their existence.  And that purpose is fruit, reproduction, survival.  The flower gives way to the fruit of the plant, to the seed, and therefore is the plant's way of propagating itself and thus ensuring survival of the species (do plants have species?... Hmmm).  In other words, in nature, the flower isn't where it's at.  The flower precedes the truly [beautiful?] important part of the plant, the seed.

How often do we find this in our lives?  How often do we miss the truly important parts of our days and weeks because we are distracted by the beautiful things that will pass away?  How often do we see only the temporal advantages of something but miss the truly eternal aspects of it that will only come through time?

How great is God to provide us with something as beautiful as a flower, even though it has no obvious (other than attracting bees and butterflies) purposes?  God could have made flowers just as bland as many other parts of the landscape, but He made them different, He made the stand out?  But that doesn't mean they're more important, in fact, in some ways they're less important than some of the more bland parts of the plant, such as the leaves, or the seeds, or even the roots!

I hope that I'm not simply a flower in the chain of human existence.  I hope that I'm not beautiful and smell nice (well, I do hope I smell at least ok most of the time) but provide no eternal consequence, no beneficial development.  I hope that I don't pass away without first planting seeds that will spring up into a harvest of life to those around me and those to come after me.  I hope that God gives me the grace to be as efficient as a leaf, as beautiful as a flower, and as beneficial as a seed (sorry root, I couldn't think of anything nice to say about you....but I hope I have good roots as well).

The End.