Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Garden (09/07/06)
-
TITLE: Harvesting of the Heart | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
09/08/06 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
We all have a garden of thoughts growing within our hearts. Seeds are planted day after day from our input of reading and viewing materials and observations, fertilized with our life experiences and cultivated with good or bad habits and attitudes.
Seeds of kindness, watered with humility and love and tended with patience yield a harvest of blessings, fragrant and delicately colored like the crocuses of Spring.
Seeds of joy burst into rapturous song displayed through the muted wildflowers of service and sacrifice.
Seeds of encouragement bloom into masses of sweet-scented lilacs as we acknowledge the beauty in others.
Seeds of grace and mercy, watered with tears, grow into miraculous weeping willow trees, swaying in the gentle breezes of empathy and understanding, creating shelter for the emotionally needy.
Seeds of sorrow and helplessness bloom into hardy rose bushes as we accept the parody of beauty germinated from pain.
Weeds of discontent and selfishness and greed are carefully, but purposefully, removed from our gardens, but stubbornly return like persistent dandelions.
Some heart’s gardens are bright and cheerful and healthy, while others are barren and dry and ravished by the weeds life’s troubles.
All gardens have the same cycles of joy and sorrow mingled with life and death, health and illness. But the gardens that are the most beautiful are the ones which have persevered and flowered in the face of adversity with bouquets of rich perfume and magnificent colors, much like the process of an emperor moth emerging from its cocoon.
We all have a garden of thoughts growing within our hearts. The secret of a bountiful harvest lies, not in the quantity or depth or quality of the seeds planted, but in the fortitude and determination and purity of the hearts where they develop.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.