The Passion Flower

I don’t want to go overboard on sharing my memorials, because I doubt you care to hear them all! However, there is one event that keeps coming to me that I feel led to share, because it gives such hope, and for me, proof of eternal life. I know that is an amazing claim, but you be the judge!

I ended up moving into Mary’s house (continued from my last post). I wanted to learn all I could about the Lord, and the Bible. I lived with her for about 2 ½ years. One night, before I came home, the Lord took Mary to be with Him.

Of course, I was very shaken and upset. I couldn’t believe the Lord had taken her. I was so confused. All I could do was question, why? I called in to take the next day off from work. My boss was very kind. He told me to take as much time as I needed. The Lord comforted me during this time by leaving His handprint and His touch on many details that came up before Mary’s funeral.

Mary’s funeral was held three days after her passing. I went back to work the next day. When I arrived at work that day, a couple of the ladies said that I needed to talk to Van, because he had some kind of weird experience in my office. Now, I really didn’t know Van. We said hello when passing in the hall. Van was in his forties, and married, with a family. I was 22 years old.

(I worked as a secretary. It was 1970. Computers were huge. They needed their own room. The computer room had its own air conditioning, as the temperature had to be kept at a certain level. My office was an enclosed glass-walled small room in the corner of the big computer room. (It was a very lonely place to be all day!) The fact that the room had its own air conditioning is an important one as you read on.)


Right away, I went to Van’s office. (Van did not know anything about me or my life. All he knew was that I was absent from work because a friend had passed away.) When I saw him, he told me that he had gone into my office the prior day (the day of the funeral) to put my boss’ mail on my desk. After entering my office, he sat in my chair, and began to sift through the mail.

As he related his experience to me, he got tears in his eyes. I couldn’t imagine what was going on! He said while he was sitting at my desk, he felt like someone was standing behind him. The feeling was so strong, that he kept looking to see if anyone was there. Then, he said my small office suddenly filled with a very sweet fragrance. He said he got up and walked out into the main computer room, and out into the office hallway, but he couldn’t smell the fragrance in either place. Yet, when he walked back to my office it was very strong, and he still felt like someone was in the room with him.

He said he then went to all of the office ladies, and asked if they had been in my office at all. He thought that maybe their perfume or hairspray fragrance was still lingering. None of them had been in my office at all since I had been away. Then, he asked to get close to them to smell their hairspray and perfume! (No wonder they thought he was acting weird!) He could not identify the fragrance on any of them.

On my second day back to work, Van came into my office. He was very excited. He said that while he was sitting on his patio the prior evening, he had smelled the fragrance again. He said he walked over to a flowering plant that he had in a pot. The fragrance was coming from his passion flowers. After he left my office, I looked up the passion flower in the dictionary. I don't have that dictionary to give you the exact wording, and it wasn’t as in-depth as what I’m about to share with you, but I think you will find this pretty amazing. Neither of us had any prior knowledge of the flowers’ symbolism.

“The "Passion" in "passion flower" does not refer to sex and love, however, but to the passion of Jesus in Christian theology. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion:
• The pointed tips of the leaves were taken to represent the Holy Lance.
• The tendrils represent the whips used in the flagellation of Christ.
• The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles (less St. Peter the denier and Judas Iscariot the betrayer).
• The flower's radial filaments, which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower, represent the crown of thorns.
• The chalice-shaped ovary with its receptacle represents a hammer or the Holy Grail
• The 3 stigmas represent the 3 nails and the 5 anthers below them the 5 wounds (four by the nails and one by the lance).
• The blue and white colors of many species' flowers represent Heaven and Purity.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_flower

I couldn’t believe my eyes! I read the definition to Van. He was amazed as well! I knew it was some kind of message from the Lord!

There is more to tell here! Story to be continued!

In His Name,

Susan (Email: ViollaSwamp@gmail.com)

Prayer Request: Please pray for a good friend of mine, Sandra. Pray that the Lord will heal her colon problems. Thank you!

I haven't heard back yet on Bonnie's MRI.