Rock Flowers

Rock Flowers

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♥ “Thou hast shewed thy people hard things” (Psalms 60:3). ♥

bloom of rock flowers

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I have always been glad that the Psalmist said to God that some things were hard.

There is no mistake about it; there are hard things in life.

Some beautiful pink flowers were given me this summer,

and as I took them I said, “What are they?”

And the answer came, “They are rock flowers; they grow and bloom

only on rocks where you can see no soil.”

Then  I thought of God’s flowers growing in hard places;

and I feel, somehow, that He may have a peculiar tenderness for

His “rock flowers” that He may not have for His lilies and roses.

♣ Margaret Bottome ♣

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rock flowers growing in "character" in hard places

Ω

The tests of life are to make, not break us.

Trouble may demolish a man’s business but build up his character.

The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man.

If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives,

be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel.

♠ Maltbie D. Babcock ♠

Ω

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  “Heroes are forged on anvils hot with pain,

And splendid courage comes but with the test.

Some natures ripen and some natures bloom

Only on blood-wet soil, some souls prove great

Only in moments dark with death or doom.”

♣

by Mrs. Charles Cowman – Streams in the Desert

♠

“God gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.”

Dandelion Seeds

anger spreads and roots wherever

Sometimes you see a boy or a girl who has a very bad temper which

he does not try very hard to control. At such times, when things do

not go just as he wants them to and he goes into a rage, a rush of

words pours from his mouth, words that he would ordinarily be

ashamed of and ones that he will wish with all his heart he might

recall.

I know a girl who got terribly angry one time and she began to say

very naughty words about her little friend. Her father heard the loud

talk that was going on outside and went to the door and called his

young daughter to him. He saw a dandelion in full seed—its big tall

stem rose high above the grass around it and on top of that stem

was that ball of pure whiteness almost ready to blow away with its

hundreds of tiny seeds. The girl’s father told her to pick off all that

white fluffy top. Then as she brought it to him he told her to go out

and throw the whole handful up in the air as far as she could.

Of course the wind caught each little seed with its white wing, and

how they scattered in every direction. After the last one had settled

to the ground and most of them gone from sight and ready now to

take root and grow,—her father told his little girl to try to pick them

all up and put them back on the stem again.

Words are just like that. How fast they scatter the moment you let

them out of your mouth—and somewhere they take root too so that

others think they can do it if you can.

But, oh, how much you would give to be able to collect some of those

words back again.

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Ω Ω Ω

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Moses …

A great man injured by anger was Moses. When the people murmured

and asked for water, Moses was commanded to strike the rock at Horeb.

Out of all patience with the people and their waywardness, Moses struck

the rock twice, as if the rock had been the head of the people, crying out

as he did so, “Hear, ye rebels!” This burst of rage cost Moses the Promised

Land, because it was for this transgression that Moses —in spite of his

grand service and his pathetic pleading at the end of Israel’s long wandering

—was not permitted to go into the land of Canaan. That was not the first nor

the last time that a land of promise and of happiness was lost through anger.

Moses was not as patient as God.

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Jonah …

Jonah is an example of how the character of a good and a great man can

be marred by anger, and his usefulness impaired. His story suggests the

folly, the danger, and the injury of anger. Unfortunately, when a man feels

anger and gives unrestrained expression to it, as Jonah did, his fellowman

is not as patient and long suffering as God was and does not always return

the soft answer which God returned to the angry and petulant Jonah.

♠

Anger is one of the most common sins, yet one of the most dangerous and

injurious to the peace and well-being of man. More than any other sin,

it blasts the flower of friendship, turns men out of Eden, destroys peace

and concord in the home, incites to crime and violence, and turns love and

affection into hatred.

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Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

An answer, when mild, turns away rage,

but a word causing pain makes anger to come up.

Proverbs : 15 : 1

Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

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So, Control Thy Temper!

Humility

♣ ♥ ♣

WHY IS “HUMILITY” AN INGREDIENT IN WISDOM?

 

Humility generates truth and objectivity.

Humility is freedom. Your personality expresses

itself in an organic, internally generated, and

more real way.

Humility is pleasure. Arrogance is pain.

Humility enables you to embrace others.

Humility deepens your relationship with God.

Until you know what you are willing to die for,

you have not yet begun to live.

 

 

Four Seasons Of A Tree

♠  ♣  ♥  ♦

♠  ♣  ♥  ♦

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn
not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest,
in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance
away.

♠  ♣  ♥  ♦

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The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the

third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall. When they

had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe

what they had seen.

♣

The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted.
The second son said no-it was covered with green buds and full
of promise.
The third son disagreed, he said it was laden with blossoms that
smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful
thing he had ever seen.
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and
drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because
they had each seen but ONLY one season in the tree’s life. He told
them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season,
and that the essence of who they are – and the pleasure, joy, and
love that come from that life – can only be measured at the end,
when all the seasons are up.

α

If you give up when it’ s winter, you will miss the promise

of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of

your fall.

Ω

Don’t let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest.

Don’t judge life by one difficult season.

Persevere through the difficult patches and better times are

sure to come some time or later.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves.
The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
~ Carl Jung ~

wildflowers

Flowers often grow more beautifully on dung-hills than in gardens that look beautifully kept.
~ Saint Francis de Sales ~

 

 

 

The Invitation

alone on each stalk but beautiful

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

Ω

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

Ω

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow; if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic; to remember the limitations of being human.

Ω

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

Ω

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

Ω

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

Ω

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

Ω

♦ ♦ ******** ♦ ♦

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and

if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

contentment in just being alone

by OriahMountainDreamer copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Rose

The Rose

♥Daniel Miller♥

And upon a day, while walking among the flowers of

his teacher’s garden, did the child speak unto the Mystic:

“Some men claim that this life
is the darkness of a curse,
and a punishment to be endured
for all our wicked ways.
Oh Mystic, what say you of life?”

And the Mystic answered:

“I say that life is neither a curse nor a punishment,
But a rose filled with the beauty of desire.

The stem of the rose is your life upon this earth,
The thorns, painful lessons you bring unto
yourself, that you might learn.
The leaves are those joys that enter
your life with the tenderness of an unseen Love.

Curse not the sorrow of your thorns,
for the deeper they cut unto the heart of
your being, the greener the leaves of joy shall be.

The tiny bud is your soul, waiting to
bloom with the truth of God among its petals.
Slowly will your flower unfold,
that you might not become lost
within the fragrance of its secret.

♥

♥

And when the rose is at the height of its beauty,
Shall you not see the pureness of God
smiling from the very center of your Being ?”

sweet fragrance of a rose at the height of its beauty

Lessons from an Oyster

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There once was an oyster
whose story I tell,
Who found that some sand
had got into his shell.

It was only a grain,
but it gave him great pain.
For oysters have feelings
although they’re so plain.

Now, did he berate
the harsh workings of fate
That had brought him
to such a deplorable state?

Did he curse at the government,
cry for election,
And claim that the sea should
have given him protection?

‘No,’ he said to himself
as he lay on a shell,
Since I cannot remove it,
I shall try to improve it.

Now the years have rolled around,
as the years always do,
And he came to his ultimate
destiny ­ stew.

And the small grain of sand
that had bothered him so
was a beautiful pearl
all richly aglow.

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.

Now the tale has a moral,
for isn’t it grand
What an oyster can do
with a morsel of sand?

What couldn’t we do
if we’d only begin
With some of the things
that get under our skin.

♣

*Author Unknown*