The bouquet of red roses caught my attention. Just before Christmas two women and a little girl found seats near the fireplace in the coffee shop where I hang out. They brought the roses. One of the women, a pastor’s wife, recognized me, and we chatted for a moment. “Who are the roses for?” I asked. “We don’t know yet,” she replied. “We’re going to ask God who we should give them to.”
Later, I had to find out what happened with those roses so I tracked down the woman I’d met. She said this idea of giving away Christmas roses had been passed down to her from her mother-in-law. The year before, she and her 8-year-old daughter, roses at the ready, were in a store when her daughter pointed out a woman. (“My daughter doesn’t have the Holy Spirit, Jr.,” the woman told me. “The Holy Spirit speaks to her!”) When they gave her the roses, the woman was stunned and wept. Turns out her husband had died recently, and the roses were a miraculous love gift from God.
That day after I’d left the coffee shop the three of them prayed and her daughter spotted a woman sitting alone in a corner booth. So, they walked over and told her that God wanted her to have the roses. Of course, she was shocked. She had gotten out of the house for some quiet while her husband stayed with their two sick kids.
My friend said that after they parted she felt like the gift hadn’t been as special as the year before; “kind of a bust,” she said. But then the Lord whispered to her, “Do you think I wouldn’t see a tired mom with two sick kids at home and want her to have roses?”
The verse that prompts my friend’s grace-giving is from 2 Cor 5:14 NLT, “Whatever we do, it is certainly not for our own profit but because Christ’s love controls us now.”
