Soon you will pass from this earth and your soul will stand before the Judgment of God. You will take nothing with you but your soul. But you will not even keep that if you are not converted! In the plainest possible words, Jesus said “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Have you reached within your soul and cleansed it of the withered spirit and replaced it with the Heavenly spirit? On a withered rose bush on my front porch a bloom of palest red, shaking in the winter wind and snow, a rose is growing. The rose grows when brutally cut down to a stump, beauty blooms from dry sticks. And there is the miracle too of the tender and fragrant flower that grows on the sharpest thorn. A rose blooms in the cold of winter, at the darkest midnight hour.
Elizabeth’s story begins with suffering and loneliness and shame. She was barren and she was old - she was what some people would so unkindly and cruelly have called 'a dried up old stick'. She did not conceive. This was her fate. She would wait for the questions to come whenever she met someone new. 'You haven't any little ones yourself?' And sometimes she would deny that she desired them rather than admit this limitation of her powers or this lack of the blessing of God. But sometimes she would be honest and the tears would flow and she would be pitied. And in the darkness of the night she would often weep for the countless babies she had not borne. But then, late in life, in the winter of her years, beyond the time for such things, she conceived. And Elizabeth had a cousin called Mary, a young woman with a very different story. She was too young to conceive, too innocent, not yet tested in the ways of life. But, like Elizabeth, she found herself pregnant. With her also it was not the time for such things. There would be a scandal. There would be talk. And her body was young, so young to carry a baby and bring it into the world. And she was frightened. She hurried away to visit her cousin Elizabeth. It might have been that Mary's easy fertility would mock Elizabeth's long struggle, but these two women recognized each other's pain and joy and they held each other. Elizabeth and Mary know that new life comes to bloom where it is unexpected and where some think it ought not to be. A rose grows in the cold of late winter, a daffodil blooms too early, the blossom comes before even the first frost has sparkled on the ground and a common dandelion pushes its sun-like head through the concrete-cracked pavement of a city street.
The moral to this is that you see your life is withering away if you don’t find Jesus and put Him in your life. It doesn’t matter that winter is here and the rose is struggling to bloom, for Jesus wants you to cry out to Him in the cold, warm or Hot. It is your heart that He wants to see bloom. Jesus is more than capable of letting the rose bloom, just as He is the answer for you.
Don’t allow yourself to stay out in the cold too long, without seeking the warmth of your Heavenly Father, for you to will wither away.
As I feel the spirit within me growing stronger each day, I realize that only thru Christ can we grow, as with this one last rose bud.
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