Great Bellflower

These Great Bellflowers were growing by the entrance to a field off Stocks Lane late this summer. They give no scent but their tall, dignified forms and their pretty white and purplish flowers were a pleasure to behold on my bicycle as I tootled home from chapel.

I meditated on why wild flowers are so wonderful. In colour and style, they can seldom compete with their more delicate, cultivated cousins. Yet the rough and wild places in which they grow make their presence the more welcome. Christian fellowship is like that. Few Christians can compete with worldlings in terms of culture, wealth, sophistication and charm, and not many of our churches are populated by the noble and the wise. Yet we grow in the roughest places, and one believer meeting another, even in a dank prison cell, is a beautiful expression of heavenly fellowship.