The seven flowers

This is another meaningful story, which Sri Swami Vishwananda shared with us during one of his speeches:
Once, there was a sage, a great saint, who decided to go to a certain town. He was very famous. So famous that the people were excited to hear that he was coming. They started to prepare for his visit weeks before. Then a devotee of his came to the people of the town and said, “You know, I heard that when he performs his prayers he likes to use seven flowers.” Well, now a lot of confusion started happening. “Which type of flowers shall we take, to give to this Swami?” So they ran to the saint and said, “Reverent Sir, we heard that while praying you use seven flowers, but there is such a variety of flowers and we don’t know which flowers to use. The saint looked at them, and started laughing madly.
He said, “Yes, I use seven flowers to pray, but these seven flowers, I want each one of you to give to me. The seven flowers are truthfulness, love, service to people, prayer, devotion, loyalty, and control of the senses.” These are the seven flowers. He said, “If somebody gives this to God, gives it to oneself, God will be pleased. There is no greater thing than this. It reminds me of what Krishna said in the Bhagavad-Gita, “If somebody offers to me just a small leaf, with love from the heart, I shall accept it.”