The Sylvr Pen

Bursting through the ice of this unrelenting, bitter-cold, ice-encased winter, I publish a blog post!

Tah-dah! I didn’t know if I’d ever resurface, but here I am, thanks to a Five Minute Friday prompt I decided to go searching for on a whim—which I found here:

I offer few words, as usual with five-minute free-writes (because I’m a lousy typist and poke out letters too snailly), but this tidbit may get your thinker opened up for business anyway, just like the prompt word did mine…

GO:

“Open.” It was the second word he learned to read. He was two years old.

He was very visual, but that wasn’t the only reason he learned to read that word so young. It was because we were so constantly on the lookout for it whenever on the road.

It was the time of the “gas crisis,” when you didn’t know if you’d have enough gas in your tank to get to work or the grocery store or the doctor… And so when we got in the car and the tank was running low and we’d not found gas for sale, we got searching desperately for the big sign that stations would put out on display when they had fuel: “Open.”

Desperation made for adult motivation that engendered child enthusiasm to join in. How often the little guy in the car seat was the first to spot the announcement and shout it out: “Open!”

I’m thinking about how this dynamic translates to spiritual influence.

But I don’t have any more time to write about it…

here, now.

So,

just think about it. Keep your mind open to it through today, tonight, life…

STOP.

Only don’t. Stop thinking about it…

How do you make a lily grow?

You don’t!

You do need to give it enough sunlight.

It has to get adequate water.

And good soil is important to nourish its roots.

Blessing and praying for it won’t hurt.

And talking (nicely) to your plants seems to impart some benefit, too.

But mostly, you just have to wait.

Because you. can’t. make a lily grow… you can’t!

I love the Frog and Toad Together story “The Garden,” in which poor toad works himself to exhaustion talking, reading, singing, and even playing his violin to his seeds to get them finally to sprout and peek out of the ground. Yet hidden they remain.

So finally, as instructed, he simply rests and waits. At last the tendrils of green begin pushing up through the rich, damp soil, and he rejoices, but notes that growing them was “very hard work”!

And so it is with my spiritual growth:

I do have a part to play in my own soul’s maturing. Neglected like an unwatered, unfed, untended lily, it will wither.

As God explains in His own gardening guide…

Seed sown by the wayside… gets trampled down, and… devoured by birds

… on rock… withers away because it lacks moisture.

sown among thorns…, the thorns choke it out.

Only on good ground, does it spring up, and yield bountifully

(Luke 8:5-8)

So…

says the LORD:

“Break up your fallow ground,

And do not sow among thorns” 

(Jeremiah 4:3).

.

BUT…

“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground,

and should sleep by night and rise by day,

and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.”

(Mark 4:26-27)

because…

So then, neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters,

but God who gives the increase  

(1Corinthians 3:7).

Cooperating with the Master Gardener, and resting in Him.

*****

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Linked to Still Saturday

There it is, in all its glory!

I thought it would never happen, that its agonizingly slow growth couldn’t possibly beat the frost that would prevent its bloom.

But voila!

It got planted late, because there didn’t seem to be a place for it anywhere. Finally I plunked the three bulbs into a big clay pot of planting mix, and set it in the sun, and watered, and waited.

And waited.

When nothing, and I mean nothing, was happening, with this big pot of plantless soil looking foolish there on the patio, I moved it around to the trash-can side of the garage, and largely forgot about it, largely gave it up.

But spring and summer both kept giving rain faithfully at optimum intervals, watering everything for me—including this lily I was ignoring.

Then one day, passing by, I saw the green sprouts poking out from the deep brownness.

Ah! So I dragged the planter back to the patio and gave it a generous drink  of cool water.

It did grow, but not at earth-shaking speed. Millimeter by millimeter, that’s all.

A long lot of weeks passed before the stalk had some height and a bud started forming at its apex. Finally that (possibly empty) promise of bloom started swelling and elongating, but, again, how slow!

Fall was approaching faster than lily flowering. And frost, which would put abrupt end to all its possibities, was already overdue.

Then one afternoon I came in from the garden, and what a splendorifous surprise!

For days after that, every time I approached the back porch, the sight of it startled my heart with a rush of warmth all over again. The magnificent thing seemed to welcome me with petals thrown wide like arms, glowing with life and joy and praise to its Designer. And it seemed to speak to me as heart to heart, a message of kinship and hope.

I too am a late bloomer. I also got planted late. Sometimes there has seemed to be no place for me to fit in anywhere, either. And how often I’ve shaken my head in dismay at the slowness of my growth! At times it looks like all my efforts and hopes for holy bloom will never reach even close to the fruition I long for before this lifetime’s end!

But God’s yet more faithful than this year’s rains. And He doesn’t give up on me, even when I do. What hope and encouragement I find in that radiant lily’s reminder of these truths!

It’s worth the straining and stretching to grow upward toward Him. It’s worth the persevering and waiting…

Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light…
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him…

-Psalm 37:5-7

It’s a mystery, what was causing those computer blackouts.

It’s a mystery, also, what made them go away—almost. (It still happens now and then.)

I had savvy help in my search for the cause, and our best guess was something a little weird, about magnetism and watches. I had been wearing a heavily metallic watch most of the time when I had the trouble.

So I stopped wearing the watch when at my laptop, and the computer started healing.

It’s hard to remember to remove your watch every time you sit down at the keyboard.
So when a loose link turned its band floppy, I stopped wearing mine entirely.

Two major life adjustments!
Much learned.

I’d wanted to cut back on internet time. The blackouts forced me into it.

I’d been seeking God’s guidance on whether to continue blogging, and well, this event, though not the only thing I would let direct me, certainly seemed timely.

I also learned again what life’s like without the internet. (Sweet sigh!) Except for the weather forecast and quick information searches, I was surprised at how little I missed it. I even found myself reluctant to get back to the future after enjoying the past!

What about the blogging? Will I continue? (Smile) That’s a mystery, too—as much to me as to anyone else. Inertia can set in more readily than I’d have guessed. However, momentum can build from just one post, then another, too… And I’m still seeking more insight and direction from God.

But right now, with this little post, I’m here. And in my head a whole conglomeration of posts have been lurking for some time. And it’s autumn, which means (I hope!) a slowdown from all the summer overload. (I don’t know how I could have kept blogging this past summer and not shortchange the most important areas of my life.)

So we’ll see where all these factors lead.

For now, it’s still a mystery…

“Happiness is a house with many doors—“

So said the card.

He’d bought it because our house has many doors.

The words caught my heart because they could mean so many things–(and maybe because I’d just read, a  few hours before, this post about open doors)…

Inside the card his own scribble said, “I know this day does not represent one of your favorite times—there have been bad connotations in the past—but…”

But…

We’d just finished dinner when I saw, peripheral, out the window of one of those doors, a passing blurr of white, and heard, I thought, a slowing.

“Did someone just turn in the drive?” I asked, as he walked to the middle front door, to fetch the mail, come late. I thought I’d heard the gravel crunch.

No sign of anyone, and he kept on walking.

“I guess someone’s just turning around,” I murmured…

I settled myself again at table, and the doorbell rang. But which one? “Ding-dong,” meant back door, didn’t it? And the front one just goes “Ding-,” unfinished (I thought, but I do get this mixed up).

Was he being cute at the front door, or had someone come up the drive to the back? I glanced out the front, seeing no one, and hearing the bell go “Ding-dong” again, I headed through the  kitchen door, out through the mudroom door, to the back door… and saw no one!

Swinging it open anyway, I now saw the Fed-Ex truck, driver back inside—and the box leaning against the milk can.

“1-800 Flowers.com…”

Waving smiles at the Fed-Ex guy, I gathered up the package like a baby.

We reached the kitchen both at once, he with the mail, I with the box, which I naturally started tugging at, most eagerly.

He’d done it again, our once prodigal boy grown man, matured now and gentled by life’s rough edges: another Mother’s Day jolt.

He doesn’t do such things half-way. This year there’s candy, too. And a longer note—of love.

I remember doors that slammed. A teen who ran away. A bedroom door I closed and didn’t open for over a year, couldn’t bear the cleaning needed beyond it till then. Then all the years of not knowing, and a doorbell that never rang to announce return.

But…

one day a phone rang…

Does your heart wrench on Mother’s Day? For you I pray what my card said this year:

“the blessing of faith,

the gift of hope,

and the miracle of love…”

The door you’re looking through might not be the right one. Or the time, though dragged out in many Mother’s Day tears by now, is not yet the right time.

There’s always that little word, “but” — which, with one word added, fills  with impossible possibilities:

“But…

But God…”

Don’t quit praying—

Or opening doors.

 *****

Linked to Sunday Stillness