Author Sheila Walsh writes about her friend, Thelma, who has a fake garden. The thing is, Thelma wants a pretty yard without all the hard work that a garden requires, so she plants plastic flowers in her yard. The flowers look beautiful, and from a distance, no one can tell that they aren't real. But there are no honeybees in Thelma's garden. The bees learned a long time ago that although her flowers look pretty, they have no flavor or nourishment to them. (1)

Reading about Thelma's fake garden reminds me of a story that Dr. Fred Craddock once told about an annual Easter tradition at a church in Georgia. Every year, on Easter Sunday, the church was decorated with 500 Easter lilies! The lilies were arranged on the chancel in the shape of a cross, placed in each window of the church, across…