On the Precious Frgrance of an English Garden

Many years ago, I fancied the delight of an English garden. Its fragrances were a welcomed cool trace across my visage in the heat of that two week stint in a hot Kansas summer. It many times invited me into that place of solace, a welcomed escape from the day at hand. I gazed upon those precious little flowers, their delicate arms were oft visited by those flitting butterflies and the stalwart bee intent on his toil. Times I am reminded of that pastime; it evokes memories and carries me into a place of long ago in my precious south, to a place where I enjoyed another sweet solace, the woodsy palace of prayer upon the hill.

Whispers of the Lord sweetly drawing near, like a flitting wing of an eagle drawing down to bring some peaceful comfort. Such always seemed to be a pleasant scent; a cooling calm in the face of some crisis. Firmly, crises are a part of every life. Sometimes the prayers of others are the fragrance, like the sweet savor before the temple, that brings the calm or a peace; your faithful friend intercedes, the Lord sends a restraining angel or He brings a new circumstance to thwart the heat.

Though that little English garden and I are apart, I have sensed the calmness and that wafty scent many times. In Iraq it was the whir of rockets screeching o’er head, it has been a stalwart calming , knowing that many were sending up a sweet savor for me. It was a rocket piercing my office, I being safely away; yet another sweet-smelling savor. It was the restraining Hand of the Lord that helped my precious wife and son that day out there on that highway, it was God’s precious favor granting prayers for many things over the years. How about you? Are you mindful of the precious interceding prayers of many for you? Are you grateful for the precious fragrance of those little English gardens? I will always remember that little garden and that hill of my childhood, where the Lord came. Where He walked with me, and He talked with me; where He even today tells me I am His own. Blessings. Sherrell

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