I bought Robin a dozen roses for Mother’s Day and she placed them in the windowsill just above the kitchen sink. When I looked at them the other day I was disappointed at how quickly they had wilted. I thought that I had picked out the best of the bunch on the day that I bought them. I looked for colorfastness, vibrancy and an all around robustness in the blooms themselves. When I placed them in their vase I even had a couple of ladies from the church giving me good advice on what to do for them so that they could maintain their appearance of life.

That’s right, their appearance of life. You see, I didn’t buy Robin a dozen live roses; I bought her a dozen dead roses, or rather, a dozen dying roses. As soon as those roses were cut from the bush, they began to die. Now, the nursery shipped them as quickly as possible to the store where I purchased them and the florist stuck them in refrigerated compartments to keep them as fresh as possible until I plopped my money down on the counter. They finished dying in the windowsill last week.

So goes the life of a rose. But, when I think about the life of those roses I saw how they illustrated so nearly to the life of mankind as we know it today. For you see, our lives are like the lives of those dozen roses.

Paul tells us that before we knew God we were dead in our trespasses and sins. The law of sin and death works 24/7 until we breath our last and our bodies are covered with the dust that we shall return to. In Adam, we were all cut off from the Branch. From the expulsion from the Garden, humanity resembled that bouquet of dying roses.

Now, the Gardener did, and does what He can in order to maintain the life of the bouquet of humanity, but He does not stop the inevitable. When the flower is cut from the vine, it begins the process of death. The only way that I could possibly save Robin’s roses would be if I could somehow attach them back to their life-giving source, if I could graph them back into the vine. Then, the nutrients from the vine would once again flow to the flowers and I could say, “These flowers are no longer dying.” When you and I gave our lives to God through Jesus Christ we were grafted back into the true Vine.

All of man’s efforts to keep up the appearance of life are like my futile attempts to maintain the life of that bouquet of roses. Humanity is dying and it needs a Savior, a Life-giving Savior. Through Jesus Christ we have been accepted into the Beloved and grafted into the life-giving Spirit. We have been set free from the law of sin and death and we go from glory to glory.

“The thief cometh but to kill, steal and destroy, but I am come that you may have life and that to the full.” Jesus said these words while He lived a perfect life completely “attached” to His Father. Jesus was never bound by the law of sin and death; He lived perfectly in God.

So, why did He die? Because He was willing to be cut from Life in order for God to justly graft us (who were already cut from Life) back into the Life-giving Vine. Because of that one Perfect Life, God shall enjoy a living bouquet of humanity–forever!