Short Stories

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“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing birds is come… arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Song of Solomon 2: 11-12



There is an old saying: that one is always closer to God, in a garden. Now, speaking as a seasoned gardener, I would be tempted to agree with this. A garden on a bright, spring morning, with its dizzying scents of blossom and the sun on the warming earth, with its busyness of bees and the lively chatter of birds waking up to the glory of new life after the harshness of the grueling winter, must surely be one of the most marvelous things on God’s great earth!

I wake up earlier in spring-time; it’s because I hear the garden calling. I tumble out of bed, and have the most minimal of breakfasts, and race to put on my garden boots. Spring makes me like a child, I feel excited just to be alive – and isn’t it the same for us all? The arrival of spring stirs something deep inside of us, and there we are, smiling for no particular reason, except that the sun is beaming its blessings down upon us and the earth is sweet again, after the long, cold thought of winter.

If the Earth is God’s garden, then surely the flowers are His thoughts? His gifts to us, to remind us that life is a thing of beauty… yet the flowers, like the beauty of our lives, are ephemeral; they come to pass, and at the end of the day, after they have returned to the kindly soil which nurtured them, we are left only with the poignant memory of their beauty.
Perhaps, if we took time to remind ourselves of the nature of God’s flowers, it might occur to us, that there’s a lesson to be learned here:

We kiss the earth but gently with the unfolding of our lives: if we live on in memory (and we do!), let us be remembered with joy; let us be as beautiful as the flowers of God’s thoughts.

I sincerely believe that our great Creator believes us to be beautiful – and so it is, we should be, or we should strive to be! So I’ll take up my gloves and my kneeler and my trowel, and with the eternal wisdom of the words of Solomon playing in my heart this spring day, go and pray in the goodness of God’s garden -



© 2010 Laura Swindon-Ross. All rights reserved.

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