Some Yellow Flowers

Oso and I went walking at Radnor this morning. A state "Natural Area" just south of the city. He loves it there, which is great because I do too, and I think it’s helping us bond, the walking.

It's a rainy day here, and as we were leaving I saw one patch of yellow flowers coming up through the leaves and dirt just off the trail. The first sign of spring that I've seen! It seems like the whole country is having a long winter and I'm ready to open some windows. I actually have one open right now so I can hear the birds.

I wanted to share this quote that I read recently from A.W. Tozer's book, The Pursuit of God.

"What can all this mean except that we have in our hearts organs by means of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses? We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for that purpose, and we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit’s urge and begin to use them."

So what are our “spiritual faculties”? Can we put a finger on them, name them? Like we can sight and smell? I can hear the birds outside and I can feel the cool air coming into this room. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to describe how I hear the voice of God. How I sense him near me, or sense his existence at all. Those things cannot be described the way I can tell you about Oso, who is lying at my feet right now.

When I read that Tozer quote, I thought of a new song of mine called Closer to the Moon. It rung true with me in the same place that this song came out of I guess. Here’s a bit of it:

"Frederick rarely hears the voice of God
He says the silence is the answer most of all
When the world has explanations for every miracle
How else would we have ears to hear him call
It’s not a steady rain, it’s more a longing or a pain
It’s in the aching that he knows there’s something more
Well I have never heard even a single spoken word
Except the rhythm of a wave upon the shore
Like watching dancers through a crack in the door"

It’s just like Jesus, it seems, to use something simple like a patch of yellow flowers to remind me how much we have to hope for.