Different but Same

I just took some scraps to my compost pile and started to come back into the house when a bright spot out the corner of my eye caught my attention. i went over and picked the most beautiful late-blooming yellow rose you can imagine! i can hardly stop smelling it--inhaling its sweet, sweet aroma! the outside of some of the lower petals are tinged with a pink blush.

it came from one of my unusual rose bushes; each flower is different. Really! the buds are usually a dark red-orange color, but then each and every flower opens to its own unique splashes of mixed yellows, oranges, apricots and corals. Some of the petals are just tipped in color, others are blushed evenly, but every one different...much like us.

it reminded me of a poem i once wrote and framed; i gave it to my Mother for Mother's Day, probably close to 20 years ago. it described one of my childhood memories of how my mother used to walk my brother and i to a neighborhood church where she taught Bible school. we were raised to never see people as black or white; we were taught no matter how different we look on the outside, God made us all the same on the inside. (Mom illustrated this to that little Bible class more than 60 years ago, but my memory of the game she had us play is still fresh. After repeating all the colors of the clothes we had on that day, Mom told us to stick out our tongue. Well! We felt very naughty because that was something that we were never given permission to do. Mom made her point of how we were all unique and yet, the same inside.)

the rose I just picked reminds me that a yellow rose signifies PEACE. i need an extra dose of PEACE these days, since Mom's very recent death stirs my emotions at unexpected times and for unexpected reasons. it also reminds me to pray for PEACE for our country, having just emerged from an historical election process. like my rose bush, this election has produced a president-elect different than all others, yet God made him the same on the inside and has laid on his heart a purpose and desire to lead our country. SHALOM!