Cut Flowers

March 12, 2023

There’s a whole slew of of mystical sayings that have multiplied like rabbits over the centuries, but such rodents have usefulness in Nature’s complex Web while mystical adages (or “saws”) quickly perish in Life’s Reality. Maybe there is a spark of recognition or a flash of brightness, but as life goes on, those “saws” are as useful as broken crutches. They are a lot like cut flowers in a vase whose petals slowly fall to the table and need continual replacement. All living, cut off from their nutritive root, need continual replacement. Any individual living thing, cut off, sooner or later face death.

People are the same. We all need a more constant and reliable source for our nutrition than the mystics offer…

Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes a so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers…” John 15:1–6

It’s true, I have found, and if you get serious, you can find it to be true, also. First, a person has to get clean and attached to the vine, being cut off from the old root and grafted into the new.

It may be nice to rely on cut flowers and depend upon old saws, but you will find, I hope not too late, that cut flowers die, and old saws simply don’t cut wood anymore.