Impossible Flowers

"For with God nothing shall be impossible" (Luke 1:37).

Far up in the Alpine hollows, year by year God works one of His marvels. The snow-patches lie there, frozen with ice at their edge from the strife of sunny days and frosty nights; and through that ice-crust come, unscathed, flowers that bloom.

Back in the days of the by-gone summer, the little sodanelle plant spread its leaves wide and flat on the ground, to drink in the sun-rays, and it kept them stored in the root through the winter. Then spring came, and stirred the pulses even below the snow-shroud, and as it sprouted, warmth was given out in such strange measure that it thawed a little dome in the snow above its head.

Higher and higher it grew and always above it rose the bell of air, till the flower-bud formed safely within it: and at last the icy covering of the air-bell gave way and let the blossom through into the sunshine, the crystalline texture of its mauve petals sparkling like snow itself as if it bore the traces of the flight through which it had come.

And the fragile thing rings an echo in our hearts that none of the jewel-like flowers nestled in the warm turf on the slopes below could waken. We love to see the impossible done. And so does God.

Face it out to the end, cast away every shadow of hope on the human side as an absolute hindrance to the Divine, heap up all the difficulties together recklessly, and pile as many more on as you can find; you cannot get beyond the blessed climax of impossibility. Let faith swing out to Him. He is the God of the impossible. --Selected 

Streams In The Desert

submitted by Becky

                                     

  

               

            Rock Flowers

"Thou hast shewed thy people hard things" (Ps. 60:3).

I have always been glad that the Psalmist said to God that some things were hard. There is no mistake about it; there are hard things in life. 
Some beautiful pink flowers were given me this summer, and as I took them I said, "What are they?" And the answer came, "They are rock 
flowers; they grow and bloom only on rocks where you can see no soil." 


Then I thought of God's flowers growing in hard places; and I feel, somehow, that He may have a peculiar tenderness for His "rock flowers" that He may not have for His lilies and roses. ~~Margaret Bottome~~

The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man 
may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real 
trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel. 
Maltbie D. Babcock

"Heroes are forged on anvils hot with pain, And splendid courage comes but with the test. Some natures ripen and some natures bloom Only on blood-wet soil, some souls prove great Only in moments dark with death or doom."

"God gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction."

Streams In The Desert
Mrs. Charles E. Cowman