Sweet Flowerets

Holy Innocents. The children murdered by Herod the Great in his attempt to snuff out the life of this newborn king he'd heard rumor of.

The imagery in the hymn is something that struck me tonight like it never did before:
Sweet flowerets of the martyr band,
plucked by the tyrant's ruthless hand
upon the threshold of the morn,
like rosebuds by a tempest torn, ...

I remember my friend Jenny writing about her peonies. A few years in a row after she planted them, a driving rain came and took out the flowers just as they were blooming. No flowers. No perfume. They were lost.

There have been times a wicked storm tore through the area. The ground is littered with twigs and ripped-up leaves and flowers torn off the trees and shrubs and flower-stems. It's so sad to see flowers scattered across the lawn or the road, just part of the debris left by the winds and the hail.

But in addition to the beauty-turned-mess, there's the loss. Rosebuds held a promise of loveliness of shape, loveliness of color, loveliness of aroma. And with those buds gone, gone also is what you were anticipating. Like Jenny's peonies.

Death stinks.




But I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.