 |
| Tulip Altissima |
This tulip, named Altissima (which translates highest), was sent by a fall bulb company as a thank you for an order I'd placed. A little note was included attesting to the tulip's height and that it should be featured prominently in the garden. Altissima seems to be happy and healthy enough to reappear for the third year now.
But of course, bearing the lovely name, the highest, we might think of Saint Paul's verses in First Corinthians chapter 12:21; 13: 1-8.
You should set your hearts on the best spiritual gifts but I will show you a way which surpasses them all...If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have not love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.
This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by the truth.
Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love never fails.
The verses above were taken from the J.B. Phillips translation of the New Testament.
