“As roses are ready to shed their perfume, so may we be eager to praise God—“

Before the pandemic arrived, one of my favorite wintertime activities was visiting the conservatory at Longwood Gardens. I haven’t been there since all this craziness consumed the world. The gardens have procedures in place to allow visitors once again. If I make a reservation, I will be able to leave winter behind when I walk through the doors into garden bliss. The fragrance, and a sweet humid heaviness in the air, are what I crave most at this time of year.

As is the case in most of Spurgeon’s sermon on John’s Doxology, his descriptive words, likening roses shedding their perfume to our praise for our Creator, fill me with renewed purpose to praise my Father in Heaven even more.

” I long that our hearts may be like Eolian harps through which each wind as it sweeps on its way makes charming music.”

Johns Doxology – Charles Haddon Spurgeon
This spontaneous outburst of John’s love is what I am going to preach upon this morning. First of all I shall ask you to consider the condition of heart out of which such outbursts come, and then we will look more closely at the outburst itself; for my great desire is that you and I may often be thus transported into praise, carried off into ecstatic worship. I long that our hearts may be like Eolian harps through which each wind as it sweeps on its way makes charming music. As roses are ready to shed their perfume, so may we be eager to praise God; so much delighting in the blessed exercise of adoration that we shall plunge into it when colder hearts do not expect us to do so. I have read of Mr. Welch, a minister in Suffolk, that he was often seen to be weeping, and when asked why, he replied that he wept because he did not love Christ more. May not many of us weep that we do not praise him more? Oh that our meditation may be used or the Holy Spirit to help us in that direction!