As someone who is always looking for material for sermons and articles, the proliferation of sites with ‘quotable quotes’ can be a useful thing. It’s not difficult these days to come up with somebody who has said something witty or illuminating about almost any conceivable subject, and that can be a great help.

There is a difficulty though. It is not always easy to verify the provenance of some of the quotes.

A good example of this is a reference I made in a previous post, Body and Soul. I quoted: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” and if you google this, just about everybody seems to think it’s something C S Lewis said. He didn’t, it’s a quotation from ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying that I’ve recently come across a great quote, though I know nothing of its context or about the person who came out with it.

While I was musing (as I often do) on why our church struggles to find willing and committed volunteers for our various ministries (something we have in common with the school PTFA, the local Community Centre and . . . just about any organisation that needs volunteers) up pops the following quote on my Google homepage:

I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some. – Herbert Rappaport

Now I don’t know who this Herbert Rappaport is, unless he’s the Austrian-Soviet screenwriter and film director who goes by that name, but I rather like the way he puts it.

People sometimes tell me what they enjoyed about their church when they were growing up. Invariably what they are describing involved someone taking responsibility and putting themselves out to make whatever it was that is being fondly remembered actually happen.

I usually gently try to point out that if the next generation are going to benefit the way some of us did when we were younger, we are now the ones who need to take on the tasks and provide some leadership. That’s an increasingly tough ask in an age when the numbers of those volunteering for anything has diminished significantly.

Of course we all need time to wake up and smell the flowers. I’m all for enjoying the life God has given us in all its abundance. But maybe we should wake up and smell the coffee, too. For if we are now all so busy enjoying the fruits of the labour of others that no-one is taking time to plant any more flowers, in the future there won’t be any left for anyone to smell.