A Rose the Color of Your Grief

"Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night." (Psalm 1:1-2)

The book of Psalms is a rose garden. That is not a phrase reached for to be pretty. It is what the book actually is: one hundred and fifty poems, five books, many hands, and somewhere in it a flower waiting for every situation a human being can face. An English clergyman named Samuel Reynolds Hole grew the most famous rose garden in his country, and in 1869 he wrote a book about how it was done. He described what such a garden becomes with time and care: beds and fountains and hedges of roses, white and blush and crimson and scarlet, roses of a glowing gold and roses almost black. What a diversity, he said, and yet what a harmony.

That is the Psalter. There is a rose in there the color of your grief. There is one the color of the morning you could not stop laughing. There is one so dark you will not want to look at it, and God set it in the book on purpose, because he did not want you to face that color alone. This is what it means to meditate on his Word day and night: not to study the garden from the road, but to live among the flowers until they become the language your own heart prays in.

But here is the plain thing we forget. No one has ever enjoyed a garden he did not walk into. You can own a book of Psalms, respect it, even defend it, and never once go in among the roses. The gate has been standing open the whole time. Do not admire this garden from the road. Enter it, and walk, until you find the flower planted for the exact thing you are carrying today.