Linneaus, founder of modern systematic botany, said: «I came to the world in order to admire God, the omniscient and omnipotent, in all His majesty. Natural History is a divine study. We must not close the eyes of the soul before God's work, but rather be led by them to see the infinite wonder of the Architect. Consideration and meditation of Nature offers a foretaste of the heavenly blessing, a continuous joy of the soul and the beginning of a full quenching of its thirst."
What an artful combination of colors! What an infinite and perfect art of weaving! What grace! What beauty! No human art can compare with the natural freshness and beauty of flowers. The Lord said: «Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.» (Matt. 6:28,29). Flowers everywhere! Flowers at birth, flowers at marriage, flowers at death! Men yearn for their company. Home with no flowers, is desert with no oasis. A nice, well-fixed flowerpot, is worth more than a hundred paintings.

Flowers talk, and instruct too. They tell us that we all are temporal and transient in this world. «All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.» (1 Pet. 1:24). Every man is like the grass and the lilies of the field. In the morning is born full of vitality and freshness, and in the evening bows down dead. Now man is at his youth and enjoys his life free of all care, but the years pass very fast, so that, without realizing it, he finds himself on the last step, expecting death any moment. How ephemeral a flower man is! Let him not boast about his abilities and gifts or achievements!

God is there, Creator of heaven and earth. The heavens declare it. The earth witnesses it. Flowers preach it!

(Michael E. Michaelides, WITH GOD or WITHOUT GOD? pages: 60,61,62,63,54, excerpts, translated from the Greek by Markos Boussios).