Carnations

I received a flower arrangement from a lady at work today who decided to bring all the women in our office flowers for Valentine's. It was such a sweet gesture and made my already happy Friday even happier. :) The arrangement has one rose, a couple other flowers and had one carnation. I HATE carnations. I am pretty sure that I have grown to hate carnations because my mom doesn't like them, and I don't think her mom liked them either. For all I know, this dislike for carnations may have plagued my family for generations. Why the disdain for carnations? They're used for funerals; they make us think of death...blech. Anyway, so as not to cause a scene by yanking the carnation out of the boquet and throwing it quickly into the trash, I left it where it was. Every time I looked at the flowers sitting on my desk, I couldn't help but see the wretched flower glaring at me...by the end of the day it seemed so much larger than all of the other flowers.

Just as I have grown to hate a flower because of my mom's dislike for them, I want to grow to hate all the sin in my life because God hates it. It's easy to hate some sins, but others I tend to justify as being small, perhaps even insignificant sins. These sins are just as big as the others, and God hates them all. They can often ruin my witness without me even realizing it.

I took the carnation out of the boquet when I got home tonight and now the arrangement is beautiful. My prayer is that, once I become more aware of the "small" sins in my life and begin to pluck them out, God's beauty and the light that is within my soul will shine brighter to those lost in this dark world.