Happy Fall, Ya’ll! 🍁🍁🍁 Autumn is here…which means “sweatah weathah,” falling leaves, and pumpkin spice everything, right??? 🤗🤗🤗
Sooooo…….in that case, you may be wondering why the picture accompanying this post looks more like a snapshot of spring than the apex of autumn. 🤔
Well…folks, I hate to burst your bubble, but this is what fall looks like here in the subtropics 😕😔😩😒😭 …a pretty “anti-climate-tic” time of year around here, I know…🤣.
While so many of you are posting gorgeous photos of leaves changing into brilliant shades of red, yellow, and orange, here in the sunshine state the flowers are still in bloom. 🌸
Especially…the fake ones.
If you look closely, you can probably tell that the flowers in this picture aren’t real —they’re silk. I bought them during a 50% off sale at Hobby Lobby last summer and used them as a low-maintenance filler for the window boxes on the front of my house. One time, I even posted a picture of my landscaping after it was all finished and you know what? The fake flowers garnered the most compliments, by far. 🤫😂
Hey, but don’t feel bad if you mistook my faux flowers for the genuine article…turns out you’re not alone. Over the course of recent months, it has become apparent that the wasps in our neighborhood have also been duped by the sham that I’ve been trying to pull off.
Every day, I watch as one by one, the bees and wasps take turns hovering outside my window in vain attempts at pollinating this faux foliage. From a distance, the flowers look believable even to an insect. But upon closer examination they all eventually come to the same discerning conclusion: It ain’t real! And then just as quickly as they came, the wasps fly off in search of real plants, realizing there’s no gratification to be found amongst impostors.
It’s like that old saying, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”
I’m not the first to substitute a cheap imitation for the real thing though. Satan’s oldest trick in the book is making a knock-off seem as good as the real thing. Ever since his days in the Garden of Eden, he’s been trying to make sin look as good or better than God’s Holy Way.
-He tries to make a forbidden fruit look like just another apple… “What’s the big deal?? Just take a bite…”
– He tries to make living together look as good as marriage… “Why commit when there’s so many fish in the sea?”
– He tries to make stealing look as good as an honest day’s work… “Who doesn’t want to get rich quick???”
-He tries to make lies sound as good as the truth… “What they don’t know won’t hurt them, right?”
-He tries to make murder sound like a woman’s right… “My body, my choice.”
-He tries to make revenge sound like justice… “An eye for and eye…”
The list could go on and on…
Satan may try to fool us, but one thing is for sure…God cannot and will not be fooled. “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” —Galatians 6:7-8
God’s ways are always better and higher than anything that Satan can tempt us with. Don’t be fooled into settling for substitutions. Even Motown agrees, “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby…” And who could argue with a voice like Marvin Gaye???? 😇
Until next time…
-PWAP
