“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1



As I write this in New Zealand the roses are blooming in people’s gardens and the rose garden at the cemetery is looking particularly splendid. As I was walking among the cemetery’s rose garden today it occurred to me, as I know it has to many others, that working with roses is sometimes an apt illustration for working with people.



Roses have thorns that prick and poke when you are working amongst them, making tasks like pulling weeds from among carpet roses a painful process. As plants they are often prone to various diseases and attacks by aphids which require regular spraying and yet they are also remarkably robust plants and tend to grow strongly, so require regular and fairly heavy pruning. Well that is about all my knowledge of growing roses exhausted!



There is one thing that struck me especially today though, and that is that while the roses are in bloom now and look fantastic, largely due to the work that has been put in by the cemetery caretakers, for much of the year the roses don’t look like this. In fact for several months all you see in this garden is thorns, branches and some leaves, but that doesn’t mean the plants are unhealthy, no, instead all it means is that it is not time for the bushes to bloom. The flowers will come, if we don’t let the thorns and barren branches put us off looking after the plant and giving it what it needs.



So when we are working with those sometimes grumpy and unpredictable creatures called people, lets remember that just because sometimes its hard work and it seems we are taking more pricks from thorns than anything else, if we keep tending to their care in due season those people will flourish and bloom just like the magnificent roses I saw today.