Flowers (wisdom stories)
The other side of the wall
There was a young woman who took great pride in the growth and care of the flowers in her flower garden. She had been raised by her grandmother who taught her to love and care for flowers as she herself had done. So, like her grandmother, her flower garden was second to none.
One day while looking through a flower catalogue she often ordered from, a picture of a plant immediately caught her eye. She had never seen blooms on a flower like that before. “I have to have it,” she said to herself, and she immediately ordered it.
When it arrived, she already had a place prepared to plant it. She planted it at the base of a stone wall at the back of her yard. It grew vigorously, with beautiful green leaves all over it, but there were no blooms. Day after day she continued to cultivate it, water it, feed it, and she even talked to it attempting to coax it to bloom. But, it was to no avail.
One morning weeks later, as she stood before the vine, she contemplated how disappointed she was that her plant had not bloomed. She was giving considerable thought to cutting it down and planting something else in its place.
It was at this point that her invalid neighbor, whose lot joined hers, called over to her. “Thank you so much! You can’t imagine how much I have enjoyed the blooms of that vine you planted.” The young woman walked through the gate into her neighbor’s yard, and sure enough, she saw that on the other side of the wall the vine was filled with blooms.
There were indeed the most beautiful blooms she had ever seen. The vine had crept through the crevices and it had not flowered on her side of the fence, it had flowered luxuriantly on the other side.
Just because you cannot see the good result of your labour does not mean that it bore no fruit.
Source: Randy Reynolds
In search of a wise man
For days the couple traveled almost without speaking. Finally they arrived in the middle of the forest, and found the wise man.
“My companion said almost nothing to me during the whole journey,” said the young man.
“A love without silence is a love without depth,” answered the wise man.
“But she didn’t even say that she loved me!”
“Some people always claim that. And we end up wondering if their words are true.”
The three of them sat down on a rock. The wise man pointed to the field of flowers all around them.
“Nature isn’t always repeating that God loves us. But we realize that through His flowers.”
In the flower shop
The woman was strolling through a shopping mall when she noticed a poster announcing a new flower shop. When she went in, she got a shock; she saw no vases, no arrangements, and it was God in person who stood behind the counter.
“You can ask for whatever you want,” said God.
“I want to be happy. I want peace, money, the capacity to be understood. I want to go to heaven when I die. And I want all this to be granted to my friends too.”
God opened a few pots that were on the shelf behind him, removed some grains from inside, and handed them to the woman.
“Here you have the seeds,” He said. “Begin to plant them, because here we don’t sell the fruits.”