Diane cut some daffodils yesterday, and I find my eyes keep turning to those simple but beautiful flowers. Outdoors, the forsythias, magnolias, greening grass, and all the other beauties of spring fill me with wonder. For a moment you forget, forget yourself, forget the busyness of the day, and just marvel. Do you know the feeling? Those moments of wonder are from God. “Fair are the meadows, fair are the woodlands, / Robed in flow’rs of blooming spring; Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer, / He makes our sorro’wing spirit sing.”
The news is so heavy on our minds and hearts. Not just the war, but the vanity of so much in American life, the power seeking of partisans, people’s insatiable drive to make money, self-seekers using and discarding people, how different from Jesus! “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” “I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 5:8; 11:29).
“Beautiful Savior, King of creation, / Son of God and Son of Man! Truly I’d love Thee, Truly I’d serve Thee, / Light of my soul, my joy, my crown.” “Truly I’d love Thee.” “I’d”? That means, “Truly I would love Thee, truly I would serve Thee.” Science can explain flowers, but no book can capture the wonder of creation. Theologians write about faith and God, but no writer has ever wrapped up Jesus by the final chapter. I would love Him more. I would serve Him more. One coming day I will love and serve Jesus as I ought.
Thomas Arnold, a nineteenth century Anglican educator, prayed, “O Lord, I have a busy world around me. Eye, ear and thought will be needed for my work done in the midst of the world. Now, ere I enter upon it, I would commit eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do Thou bless them and keep their work Thine, that as through Thy natural laws my heart beats and my blood flows without my thought for them, so my spiritual life may hold on its course at those times when my mind cannot consciously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to Thy service.” (“For All the Saints,” III, 984). In the midst of whatever your work and worries may be, pause to look at a springtime flower. “Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer, / He makes our sorro’wing spirit sing.”
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