Faith without doubt is dead; Hope without despair is indifferent; and Joy without suffering is superficial.

Like a flower, living faith is fragrant and beautiful, yet delicate and easily bruised; Like faith, a living flower, though its life is fleeting and its petals easily shorn, has a beauty unrivaled by its silken counterfeit–though its petals cannot be torn. Its allure is found in its frailty.

A flower, though deciduous, does not fret, but freely sacrifices its petals to the storm; For it knows that through its death, it will give birth to new life when the spring returns; And thus, one flower becomes three, three flowers become a dozen, and a dozen flowers become an endless sea of aromatic color.

In due time, the seeds sown by the death of that single flower will blossom into fields of hundreds of flowers, teeming with life and attracting onlookers from miles away to gaze upon its evanescent glory, before it, too, gives itself over to death, and the cycle repeats.