These roses? They still live, and I am thankful.
This rosebush is an antique. My mother-in-law gave it to me when her time living in her own various homes had come to a close and a new phase of living after my father-in-law died began. She had transplanted them from house to house for over 6 decades of marriage. She had been given them by loving family two generations older than her (who got married in front of it) when she first got married and left her hometown and family in Pennsylvania. It has been lovingly dug up, carried, and planted in different states.
I was afraid I would somehow kill them. I love plants, but roses seem both special and finicky to me. Would I kill it? Would it bloom for me?
I read A Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren, loaned to me by my niece Kristin. In it, Tish shares about a dark nighttime of her soul. During that time, when she had no words to pray, she said this, “When my strength waned and my words ran dry, I needed to fall into a way of belief that carried me. I needed other people’s prayers….when we pray the prayers we’ve been given…we pray beyond what we can know, believe, or drum up ourselves. Other people’s prayers discipled me; they taught me how to believe again…We come to God with our little belief, however fleeting and feeble, and in prayer we are taught to walk more deeply into truth…inherited prayers and practices of the church tether us to belief, far more securely than our own vacillating perspective or self-expression.”
Faith takes tending, caring. At times it may bloom great big blossoms and other times it may look like it is barely hanging on. It even may be attacked by bugs or blight. It may bear the brunt of hard weather. But a gift, it is. I need other people’s prayers at times, and I need to pray for those too weak or wounded to pray themselves.
May I be a fragrance for Jesus Christ.