What would you change at the last minute? I mean, the very last minute that you have on earth?
We women have a natural tendency to change our minds. My husband will give me a choice in something, as the gentleman that he is. The poor guy should know by now how dangerous this is. It’s gotten so out of hand that my answer is often, “I’ll take (fill in the blank), but I reserve the right to change my mind at any time — and probably will.”
Yes, I’m making fun of my own foibles, but we all know how fickle we humans really are (Jas. 1:8).
I may plan for a well-trimmed buddleia to grace the center of my garden where the knockout rose used to be, but then plant a brugmansia there in front of it while the buddleia is still small.
As the roots of the buddleia, or “Butterfly Bush,” grow deeper, it will become more precarious to move the taller shrub as I change my mind. Now that the weather has become frosty, my trusted “yard boy” has dug up the brugmansia and moved it inside for the winter. These brugmansias, or “Angel Trumpets,” as we call them, are not hardy in freezing weather.
Now I can see the butterfly bush again! Oh, yes. I then change my mind back to my original vision of the graceful purple cone-shaped flower heads arching over the purple verbena and red daylilies.
It is still only three feet tall, but it could tower nine feet or more when it’s mature. I have seen another gardener’s buddleia trimmed up like a tree, and want to do the same.
But then I come into the house, where the fragrance of the “Angel Trumpet” is beckoning me to choose it as the central figure for next season’s glory. I vacillate.
The Angel Trumpet is aptly named. These golden trumpet-shaped flowers, up to ten inches long, put forth a truly heavenly scent. They point downward, as if their tall, tree-like branches are helping the angels look down from above and sound a call to us mortals.
I can’t help but think of what the angels would trumpet about as these bloom among the less tropical flowers of our mid-south garden.
Would they trumpet the good news that Jesus loves us? Or about how he came to save the world? Would they sound an alarm of coming judgment, or would they play sweet, soothing music for our tired souls?
In Revelation chapters 8 through 9, there were angels and trumpets, and things happening that did not sound like fun. I don’t pretend to know what they mean, only that I want to be ready if and when those trumpets sound in my hearing!
The scriptures talk about the “last” trumpet sound. “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).
–Christine (Tina) Berglund@ www.forthright.net