Dear editor,

Each year when the daylilies begin to bloom, I like to pick them for bouquets inside.

Each year I understand where their name comes from because every bloom only lasts for 24 hours.

Many times I have asked God why he caused something so beautiful to last only one day.

This year, I believe I realized what he wants us to learn from daylilies:

It is an understanding of the truth stated in I Peter 1: 24-25 – “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;

the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.”

Wow.

Thank you Lord for the beauty of the illustration of this verse in daylilies.

It can help us see what is really important in life, not our status or our glory, or even our lives of flesh, but abiding in and knowing the truths found in the “living and enduring word of God.”

So in knowing those truths, help us determine how to act on them as is so simply stated in

I Peter.

Many people in the South are proud of their inheritance, whether it be that of having ancestors who were slaves or ancestors who were wealthy land and slave owners.

Many of us, even professing Christians, live in such a way that pride of that inheritance gets in the way of living life to the fullest as instructed in the enduring word of God.

Look at the first part of I Peter, Chapter 1, where it is written that because of his great mercy, God the Father has given us “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you,…”

Christians should know that “it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold” that

redeemed us from “the empty way of life handed down'” to us from our forefathers.

Of course it was the blood of the spotless Lamb of God and the mercy and grace shown through his death which redeemed us and has given us living hope.

Think of that….living hope….not once hope, not hope that has been realized, but a hope that is living and waiting.

As we learn to walk more like Jesus walked, Jesus is being revealed and more grace is given.

That walk, as described early in I Peter,

involves having “sincere love for your brothers” and loving “one another deeply”.

Also, we are asked to rid ourselves of “all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.”

Where are we, fellow citizens and Christians, in light of I Peter?

Do we put too much importance on our earthly inheritances rather than looking at what is promised as a much better inheritance?

Are we putting our eggs in the basket of our works and the glories they will bring, or are we loving our brothers deeply and sincerely? Are we striving to live life the way we have always had it, thinking that is the better way, or are we seeing the possibilities of life helping to bring about the living hope we have been promised?

When I returned to Selma in 2001, a lady cashier at Wal-Mart asked me why I wanted to come here, there was so much hate here.

I didn’t believe her really.

Though I have seen some of that hate, I choose to see the possibility of making life better here as we realize we have a living hope based on our belief in the risen savior, Jesus Christ.

Are there apologies which need to be made?

Are there horizons which need to be broadened?

Why are we stuck so deeply in inheritances which are perishable?

This year as you look at the daylilies by the roadside, in the parks, yards, and cemeteries, remember the lesson gleaned from them.

Our lives are like them, our glories fail and we die, but God’s word stands forever.

In it is a hope that is living.

Gail Box Ingram

Valley Grande