A Peter Rabbit Garden

                        
                      A Peter Rabbit Garden
Dear Friends,
     When I was a little girl the two elderly sisters who lived in the tidy brick house next door had a beautiful garden. Their names were Mary and Martha.  They always wore their hair in tight buns and wore aprons over their dresses and wide brimmed straw hats to shade their faces from the sun while they worked in the garden.
     I remember their garden as a sort of Peter Rabbit garden, although they were nothing like the angry Mr. McGregor in the Peter Rabbit tales.
    In the grassy center of the garden they had a swing that two people could sit on and it squeaked as it moved back and forth.  Just a little distance in front of the swing was a lovely circular flower bed with a shiny, blue gazing ball and a bird bath surrounded by bright red and pink roses and yellow snap dragons.  I would sit on the cool grass and play with the snap dragons, making their mouths snap, snap and make sunny faces at myself in the gazing ball.  My reflection would take on strange shapes if I moved back away from it and then I would come close again to make the reflection make me look blown up like a balloon.
    One summer day when Mary and Martha were in the garden they found a nest of bunnies in the grass. The mother rabbit had been killed somehow and they sought out neighbor children to adopt the helpless bunnies.
    Mary and Martha were always kind, never chasing the children from their lovely refuge. Like the gazing ball reflected the things around it, they were reflections of the love of Jesus, bringing His love to the people around them.
   We sometimes struggle with thoughts and memories that trouble us. I have seen how remembering things like those days in Mary and Martha's garden, things that can make you smile and bring joy is such a good thing. a necessary thing. I can understand why the Bible has a verse about our thoughts and how they influence our speech.
Psalms 19:14
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight my Rock and my Redeemer."
And Philippians 4:8-9 remind us to think on good things,  "and the God of peace shall be with you."