I love my roses, especially the sweet smelling ones.  Often when they try to make hybred types, like purple and black roses, the flower loses its fragrance.  I like the unusual colors, but the fragrance is what is best.

     This is one of the last roses from this summer.  We actually picked and put it on the table for Thanksgiving.  This bush produces roses all summer from early June until we get a killing freeze.  Because it is planted close to the house, it blooms even longer than most.

     We are a little like roses.  When we try to change ourselves into something God never meant us to be, we can lose our “spiritual” fragrance.  God has made each of us according to His perfect design, so why do we think we can improve on His work?  We look in the mirror and think, ‘my nose is too big, I think I’ll fix it’; or, ‘my hair is too gray, so I better color it quickly’.

      Maybe that red rose doesn’t like being red.  I have one in the front of my house that was red and they changed it to purple.  It is a lovely rose, but has no fragrance at all.  This year all the purple roses died and it had red ones on the stems.  The red ones smelled wonderful, but I had to trim the bush right above the graft to keep getting purple flowers.

     As Christians, we don’t have to choose between inner beauty and outward appearance.  We can really have both.  I trick is to find out where your inner beauty lies and cultivate  it.  We can maintain our spiritual “fragrance” by being the best we can be in our destiny in God.

     It also merits mentioning that the bushes that are closest to the house, live longer and produce more blooms. If God is represented  by the house, the correlation is obvious..