Father and daughter beheld its beauty, spreading throughout the sky above the surrounding hedges and trees of the garden.

“Orange and red and yellow, with the blue of the sky rising behind it and the golden blast of the sun preparing to peek over the horizon—”

He stopped, and they stood a moment together in silence.

“God’s paintbrush is so lavish with its colors,” the baron went on, “yet when another twenty minutes shall have passed, he will toss away this morning’s brush and never use it again. Never! It will be gone before our guests are out of bed!”

“It does seem a shame.”

“Oh no, don’t you see, Sabina? In God’s divine extravagant ‘waste’ is the glory of whatever his finger touches! Man constantly seeks to have and save and hoard. The children of Israel tried to store up the manna just as so many poor souls think to keep their security in my brother Otto’s bank. But God creates a sunrise and lets it dissolve into the blue, never to make just that same sunrise again. God fashions a rose and lets it go back to the dirt whence it came, never to make that same rose again. He saves nothing, he hoards nothing. He has no pockets, no banks, no libraries even to store up his truths. His truths live—like the sunrise and the roses. Even in their death, there is life, for new roses and ferns and sunrises emerge to replace those that have passed.”

“Do you mean we should not even cut the roses and try to prolong our enjoyment of them?”

“No, our Father gives us all things to enjoy. I believe it causes God delight every time one of his creatures puts a nose to the blossom of a rose, smells deeply of its perfume, and then gazes upward and outward upon the world with renewed wonder, renewed hopefulness, and new love for all things.”

“There is something in the smell that seems to beckon toward a hidden place you can never quite lay a finger upon.”

“Such is one of the many secrets the Creator has placed within the heart of the rose, which to touch ever sends some deep part of our being calling out after the eternal. The rose has many secrets, just as the garden has many mysteries. No, my child, it gives God pleasure when we enjoy what he has made. We may pick them and give them to one another and let them spread happiness to our hearts’ content.”

Sabina was silent, thinking again of the yellow rose in her room.

“If only we do not try to keep them too long?” she suggested.