THE GARDEN OF LIFE

Up the creaky stairs I used to climb to visit floors and floors of bookshelves stacked with used books wearing torn and dusty covers. An old house stood on a leafy lane where I used to live. The owner collected and sold used books with gold leafed edges, books of special edition, as well as unusual volumes of rare finds. The house was home to many used and antique books and it was my favorite place to visit. I spent hours there and have many fine treasures that rest on my bookcase and have been reread many times.

One day I found this little volume called The Secret of A Happy Life written by Margaret Moore-Jacobs and on the very first page there was a photo of her when she was just a little girl, she was wearing hair ribbons and dressed in her finest frock with lacy pinafore. A quote beneath it said "To Glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."


I bought the book and it sits on my bookcase next to my favorite chair. It has been on my stack of special books for over twenty years. When this old world begins to get me down, I turn to a chapter and read a favorite essay. Every page of this little green volume touches your heart with her wisdom and grace.

Pink, originally uploaded by bluebirdsandteapots.

I thought that I would share one of her essays today, as I show you some flowers that I found while visiting my mom in Vermont this last weekend.

The Garden of Life, by Margaret Moore Jacobs, Litt.D.
"I want you to come walk with me a little while today in the Garden of Life. There is nothing, I believe, that can touch one so much as working in a flower garden. It seems the feel of good, warm earth crumbling between your fingers goes straight through to one's heart and does something to the soul.



Don't you love to go into your garden early in the morning before everything wakes up, while that fresh smell of dew is all over? Then at noonday, when the sun is highest, that is when the flowers seem to be their gayest selves. And I can never miss a peep at least at sundown. It seems to me that is when my garden is nearest to the heavens, so still and quite and the stars beginning to shine down.



I love the sunshiny days and the rainy ones, too. Haven't you been in your garden just after a shower of rain, and could you ever forget that fresh clean odor that words cannot describe?



Life seems so easy for the flowers. God gives them everything they need for life..sunshine and rain...morning, noon and night. He gives them nourishment, and they grow and blossom. Why cannot we be more like the flowers? If we only would try to be, life would be so easy and happy for us, too.



God has given us everything we need to grow and blossom in this garden of life as He has the flowers. He has given us so much. It seems we give so little in return.



For nourishment He gives us love, and prayer. If we only keep these two things in our lives we will need nothing else to make our lives beautiful.




Have you ever noticed how our flowers respond to love? So it is with folks. They do, too.



But sometimes we feel our part in this garden is so small it is not important, that the important tasks are for others bigger and stronger than we. But have you ever noticed that some of the smallest flowers give the sweetest fragrance? So it is with our lives: oftentimes the smallest give the most beauty to life.



Then let us go out into our garden early in the morning in prayer and plant love, and we will grow more beautiful in the noonday sun. And when evening comes to us and the sun goes down on our life's garden, may we go out to meet our Master unafraid."



After doing some research on the Internet I found a wonderful site about Margaret Moore-Jacobs, that has photographs of her and her husband and her "dear little house."

The song for this post is The Promise, by Secret Garden