A Lovely Flower

"Who art thou that judgest another?" James 4:12

One Christmas someone sent Mr. Whittier a gentian flower pressed between two panes of glass. Seen from one side it appeared only a blurred mass of something without beauty. But seen from the other side of the glass the exquisite beauty of the flower appeared, in all its delicate loveliness. Whether the gift was lovely or not to the view depended on the side from which one looked at it. The poet hung the gift on the window pane, putting the blurred side out and the lovely flower side toward his room. Those who passed by without looking up, marked only a 'gray disk of clouded glass' seeing no beauty; but the poet, sitting within, looked at the token, and saw outlined against the winter sky all the exquisite loveliness of the flower;

They cannot from their outlook see
The perfect grace it hath for me;
For there the flower, whose fringes through
The frosty breath of autumn blew,
Turns from without its face of bloom
To the warm tropic of my room.
As fair as when beside its brook
The hue of bending skies it took.

But deeper meanings come to me,
My half-immortal flower, from thee;
Man judges from a partial view,
None ever yet his brother knew;
The Eternal Eye that sees the whole
May better read the darkened soul,
And find, to outward sense denied,
The flower upon its inmost side.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

"Too often we look upon the blurred side of actions - yes, of people too. We do not see the loveliness that there is on the other side. We are all continually misinterpreting others. There is a flower side in many an act which we condemn because we see only the blurred side. Let us train ourselves to believe the best always of people and of actions, and find some beauty in everything" - J.R. Miller (from Thoughts for the Thoughtful).

Compiled by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, taken from "Streams in the Desert, Vol. 2"