Bouquet of Your Choice

I just love flowers don't you? I love the potted plants that smell so fragrant. I love the cut flowers that can go in a vase to make the house look festive. I love looking out in a field of wild flowers as they sway with the breeze and the scent drifts toward me and makes me close my eyes and savor.

I have found lately that there is another kind of "bouquet" that can be gathered that perhaps we should leave in the field or on the path of life. I have been gathering "flowers of sarcasm". There have been fields of "you are not good enough", and a bed of "you are too dumb to even know that". There even was a bloom so big of "I don't like you today". I gathered all these that seemed to just fall in my path. They didn't make me smile and the smell was pretty repulsive but I seemed to gather them to me anyway. At the end of the day they didn't make up the beautiful "bouquet" that I had longed for but as I finally looked at them they were just thistles and thorns and a huge clump of weeds.

Have you ever gathered a "bouquet of hurtful words" and held onto them like they were presented to you like Miss America? Did you go to bed crying because you believed each and every "flower" you had collected that day? I have, and it was such a dismal night until I realized that these flowers were strewn by one that has no regard for me and really doesn't even know me. Even if these words were spoken by someone I love or someone in passing I seemed to collect them instead of being selective in my "bouquet" gathering. The Bible tells us;

John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;

 

 

Hmmm, so the flowers that I carelessly collected yesterday did just that. They stole my happiness and destroyed the time I could have enjoyed with a loved one. But that isn't the end of the quote, here is the rest;

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full

 

Alrighty then, I think I get it. I need to only collect the "flowers" that are kind and loving and uplifting and leave those other ones in the field and by the wayside. I need to stay in the "field" of the one that created the "flowers" in the first place. That is exactly what I intend to do today so that tonight my "bouquet" will be sweet smelling and beautiful. I want the life and to live it to the fullest. Don't you? Happy "bouquet" gathering!

 

 

Coffee for Your Heart