Set Your Mind Above

Episode #82 - Dying Flowers

October 22, 2021 Season 1 Episode 82
Set Your Mind Above
Episode #82 - Dying Flowers
Show Notes Transcript

My wife keeps a beautiful home, and I'm grateful because I don't really have an eye for the kinds of things she does. My lone contribution is buying her seasonal flowers on a regular basis to display. While they are beautiful while they last, I'm looking at my last bouquet which is now wilting and dieing. That's the thing about flowers - they don't last for long. Well...so it is with all things in this life. Their beauty & memory are short lived, but are soon gone & forgotten. If our hope is in earthly things, it will die along with them. Our hope must be in the one and only thing that will last: the love of God. 

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Welcome back to all of our listeners! I’m BJ Sipe, and you’re listening to the Set Your Mind Above podcast – where everyday ordinary events teach us extraordinary eternal truths. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today, I am excited to share my life and my faith with you, and I sure hope that you’ll do the same with me along the way. 

The house is quiet as I write today’s podcast. The candle is burning, the lights are dimmed, and the kids & Kylie are all taking naps. Today really is the perfect fall day here in Danville, Kentucky. The high today was in the upper 50’s and everything is overcast, but not so much that it feels gloomy. As I look around our home, I admire the different touches of Autumn decor that my wife has put up around the house. The dinning room runner is a deep orange & gold, with a stream of beautiful lambs ear garland running down the middle. Acorns and white pumpkins line the book cases and dining room shelf. It’s all very beautiful, really. My wife keeps a wonderful home, and I frequently feel like I am living on the set of an HGTV show. I just don’t have an eye for these kinds of things, but there is one thing that I try to do to contribute to the home and simultaneously make my wife feel special. On a regular basis, I try to go and find seasonal flowers to give to my wife that are then displayed on our kitchen bar. My wife loves flowers, and it’s probably the one helpful thing I can do to contribute to the pleasing aesthetic of our home. While I don’t have the incredible selection of the Pike’s Place Market in Seattle that we used to frequent when we lived in the Northwest, I can still find a good selection of flowers at a few different places locally here in Danville. A little over a week ago a picked out a seasonal fall bouquet for her made of burnt orange, yellow, and white flowers. They were beautiful. However, as I look upon them now, a different picture now greets my eyes. The green stems and leaves are wilting, withering and falling around the side of the vase holding the bouquet. The flowers that once stood tall and clustered together are now drooping, shedding pedals and only being held up by the weight of the other stems around them. Tonight, I will need to take the once beautiful flowers down from their display and discard them into the trash can. They have simply lost their luster, just like every other bouquet I have bought before and just like every other bouquet I will buy in the future. That’s the thing about flowers, while they are beautiful to behold and command your attention when you see them, their beauty is very short lived. I think that’s why fake flowers are such an attractive option when it comes to most decorations – you purchase them once, and you don’t have the hassle of replacing them over and over again. Even many brides are going towards having a faux bouquet on their wedding day so they can keep & it for years and years & remember their wedding day.  Of course, they’re not nearly as romantic, so I will continue to bring my wife home real flowers and then just replace them when they die. 

While this is certainly the nature of flowers, it is also the nature of things in this life. Everything in this life, no matter how beautiful or how wonderfully made, is only temporary and short lived. Let’s consider several passages of Scripture together. While I am not particularly a fan of the New Living Translation in most instances, I appreciate the way they have paraphrased 2 Corinthians 4:18, which reads, “So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” The ESV says that the things which are seen are transient, which is not typically a word we use very often, which is why I prefer this paraphrase for our better understanding – the things that we can see now will soon be gone. We live in a fallen world, death and decay exist as a result of sin, and as such nothing in this life will last forever. It doesn’t matter what it is. Good health, beauty, wealth, a new home, a new car, fresh food, no matter what you look to, it is only a short matter of time before it is soon gone. Even the most health conscious will age and ultimately one day die. Age also destroys beauty or a handsome appearance, no matter how hard you try to look forever young. We can go through each of these examples one by one in our own lives, looking at ways that this truth is currently being carried out in our lives. Knowing this, it is no wonder that Scripture teaches us over and over again to not place our hope & trust in the things of this world. If our hope is found in this life alone, then our hope will die alongside of everything else. Not only this, but because your life here is temporary, you will not be remembered here. You will die. Your legacy will fade. Your memory will be forgotten.  Just like I cannot bring to my memory in detail the beauty of past bouquets I have threw away years ago, so the same will happen to you and I. In fact, when it comes to something that lasts, there is only one thing that we can look to and place our hope in. Let’s consider Psalm 103:15-19, “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” Everything in this life will fade and come to an end, including you and I, but there is one thing that endures forever: and that is the love of God. The steadfast love of the Lord that delivered the children of Israel out of the bonds of slavery is the same steadfast love of the Lord that delivers us from our slavery to sin. The same steadfast love of the Lord that restored the people back to their homeland is the same steadfast love of the Lord that will restore our soul to a heavenly home. The love of God will never end, never fade, and never die. As such, it is the one and only thing that you can place your hope & trust in. It is the one sure thing in this life, and it will continue to be the one sure thing in the life to come. I want you to examine your life for a few moments, and think about the different cares and concerns you have had. Many of the stresses of our lives come from wishing that temporal things were eternal. We are anxious of things ending – our job, our children growing up, our time in our home, the life of those we love – and yet how long can we hold out hope for these things to last? I realize that much of my anxiety in this life is the result of misplaced hope, desperately grasping at wilting flowers hoping they would last. But they won’t. If you want to change your life, change what you are looking to. Take your eyes off the things that are seen which will soon come to an end and place them on the eternal things that are unseen. When it comes down to it, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m still learning what it means to set my mind above. A good place to start is placing all of our hope & trust in the everlasting love of God.

Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Tune in, Tuesday-Fridays, as a new podcast episode will be uploaded each day. Also, be sure to follow the Facebook page for the Set Your Mind Above podcast for future announcements and video sessions. As you have the opportunity, share these thoughts with your friends and family, and share with me what important lessons you are learning from every day, ordinary events. Until next time know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.