In My Garden - The Legend

The Legend

Once a man came into a new land. Its ways were strange to him, its pattern of life unfamiliar. For awhile he was frightened and alone. Then he took firm resolution and said unto himself, "I shall build a bit of my old life, here in this new place." And so he thought he might.

But from whence he had come, the soil was thin and full of rocks. Here it was rich and gave forth fruit in abundance. And after awhile he accepted it as fact and began boasting of his crops. When his young wife came to join him she was amazed at this man, her husband. In the old land, he would never have dared raise his voice so loudly, and with so much freedom. But already he seemed to have forgotten the margins of that other life.

She planted a seed in this new soil, a seed brought with tender care from the old land. But here, the flax plant grew taller. And its blue flower was the blueness of the sky above; the color of that other sky became but a memory. After church on Sabbath morning, men talked of crops, of government, of the roadway being built. Women spoke of clothes and gossip and even talked with the men of country, home and every man.

That morning the church bells had rung clearly, calling them to worship. There had been no fear in their meeting, no stealth. There had been confidence and peace, joy in being together.

And so, though these two tried to rebuild the old life, it was, after all, different. Just as certain ingredients change an artist's colors, making them more brilliant, more enduring, so the new elements of freedom and confidence changed the colors here, painting on the canvas, a new picture. The familiar pattern, but painted with bright new colors. So, through the sunrise and sunset, the man lived and grew old, and his wife walked beside him, filling the bread basket with freshly baked loaves, hanging crisp, bright curtains at the window, giving him three tall sons and a daughter, then leaving for yet another land.

One century left and another came to take its place. History rose and fell, and the seasons changed. The once rough, new town was older now, and they gathered one day then to do him much honor for he was the oldest of them all. And looking up to the heavens of God and into the faces of these, his friends, he uttered simply, "It is good!"

The Writings of Zelda Lorraine Brown Kline

Edited by Owen A. Kline and Michael E. Kline. Assistant Photo Editor David O. Kline
Copyright @1999 The Kline Family Organization, Inc.
First published in the United States of America by The Kline Family Organization, Inc. 4381 West 5375 South Kearns, Utah 84118