Open Up

Every blossoming flower warns you that it is time to seek the Lord; be not out of tune with nature, but let your heart bud and bloom with holy desires. Do you tell me that the warm blood of youth leaps in your veins? then, I entreat you, give your vigour to the Lord.  Every blossoming flower warns you that it is time to seek the Lord; be not out of tune with nature, but let your heart bud and bloom with holy desires. Do you tell me that the warm blood of youth leaps in your veins? then, I entreat you, give your vigour to the Lord.

This month of April is said to derive its name from the Latin verb aperio, which signifies to open, because all the buds and blossoms are now opening, and we have arrived at the gates of the flowery year.

I've never thought of the blossoming flower as warning, but perhaps it would be wise to. When the flower is open, God exposes us to the fullness of  nature. In that same regard, when God opens an opportunity in his kingdom, the fullness of his glory can be found there. Almost as God saying, my season has arrived, act now before it withers forever. There's a correlation between our awareness of nature and our awareness of God. The glory of nature allows the wholeness of his kingdom to be arrived by our senses, and rouse our souls and desires back awake.

I just had a birthday a few weeks ago. 29 years of life. I don't feel 29, not even close.  I have felt the exact same age for the last seven years. 

I remember highlights of days in the last decades. But the whole truth of it is I don't feel like I've gained very much. In knowledge and wisdom, perhaps that's understated. I've always been well adept at memorizing and recounting numbers and figures. But actual tangible memories? They always seem less satisfying than they should.

Dis-satisfaction is often how the Lord entreats my heart to again move. 

My default state is always going to be one where I circumlocute from praise. Not because of present humility (to which I address every day, yet the human conditions bilks this), but consequently out of a fear of that praise.  No day has gone by that I have ever felt worthy. And I always endure as a distraction for the next thing.


I speak to you as best I can by paper and ink, and from my inmost soul, as God's servant, I lay before you this warning, "It is time to seek the Lord." Slight not that work, it may be your last call from destruction, the final syllable from the lip of grace.