The world seems to place much emphasis on the vitality and importance of youth in just about everything: sports, business, education, and other fields of endeavor while sometimes excluding the value of those individuals who may make their best contribution later in life. Heavenly Father on the other hand has defined the worth and proper sequence of everything in His well-ordered universe in order that all things might fulfill the purpose for which they were created, and His timing is always perfect.
Around many of the buildings in downtown Baltimore, both public and private, there are hedges of rose bushes. These aren’t individual rose bushes like those that are commonly found in people’s yards; and although we aren't certain about the name of this particular variety, amazingly these plants are still producing flowers in late December! Perhaps, the unseasonably warm autumn weather has contributed somewhat to the late blooming; but even so, roses at Christmas are not a common sight in this city.
Rose blooming during December in Baltimore
Last week while entering the University of Maryland Dental School for an appointment, we walked past two men who were pruning one of these rose hedges. They had thrown most of the cuttings into large trash cans, except for three or four stems each with one or two pretty flowers still attached. One of the landscapers told Sister Lindsay to take one of the saved stems, and she chose one that still had a bloom and several leaves on it.
Several hours later having completed the dental appointment and a few other assignments, we retrieved the now wilted flower from the back seat of our automobile and took it into the apartment The petals were drooping and the leaves looked almost dead. Sister Lindsay contemplated tossing it in the trash but then thought about the worker who had carefully preserved it to give to someone like her. Cutting a small piece from the bottom of the stem, she placed the flower into a juice bottle filled with water.
After just a few hours every petal on that drooping flower had perked up, and the bloom looked like a rose again. The leaves no longer looked dead but were now bright green. And then, we noticed a tightly closed bud tucked under the open rose. Within a few days the bud opened and became a beautiful rose just in time for Christmas.
If Heavenly Father can find a way for a rose to become a "late bloomer" when it should already be out of season, can he not also find a way to rejuvenate worn out people whose sins may be as scarlet as a rose? Through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the old man can become new again to bloom wherever he is planted for the glory of God.
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