Devotional Sept 21, 2008

One morning I was looking at a bouquet of flowers in a vase on an old carpenter's bench in front of our "window on the world". I realized the bouquet was spent; it's leaves had wilted and the blossoms were falling.

The same morning I also read George Herbert and quite by "accident" came across his poem titled "Life". In it Herbert talks about a "posy" (a bouquet of flowers) he gathered so he could smell the fragrance. But, as he put it, "Time did beckon to the flowers, and they did by noon most cunningly did steal away, and wither in my hand."

The lost of his flowers caused him at first to see "time's gentle admonition." Herbert wrote that it "(made) my mind smell my fatal day; yet sugaring the suspicion." Yet even as the wilted flowers reminded him of his own death, he found in the metaphor something that sweetened the thought. Herbert concluded:

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,

Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,

and after death for cures.

I follow straight without complaints or grief,

Since if my scent be good, I care not, if

It be as short as yours.

What wisdom in this poem! Our time, however short, may be spent : "sweetly"--a sweet fragrance of Christ to others (2 Cor.2:14-16). Should not this be our prayer each day as we arise? -David Roper-

A godly life is a fragrance that draws others to Christ.

14- Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ , and through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place. ....-2 Corinthians 2:14-17