Most days my posts here are the result of my gaze turned downward, assessing the progress of a plant or a steaming cook pot. But Sundays, I'll ask you to join me as I lie in the grass and look up at the sun as it shoots over the clouds. I'd make you feel welcome to not just work alongside me, but rest alongside me, too; and our work will be all the more pleasant when we drop our eyes to assess it again...
"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances." Philippians 4:1
A story is told of a king who went to his garden one morning only to find everything withered and dying. He asked the oak tree that stood near the gate what the trouble was. The oak said it was tired of life and determined to die because it was not tall and beautiful like the pine. The pine was troubled because it could not bear grapes like the grapevine. The grapevine was determined to throw its life away because it could not stand erect and produce fruit as large as peaches. The geranium was fretting because it was not tall and fragrant like the lilac.
And so it went throughout the garden. Yet coming to a violet, the king found its face as bright and happy as ever and said, "Well, violet, I'm glad to find one brave little flower in the midst of this discouragement. You don't seem to be the least disheartened." The violet responded, "No, I'm not. I know I'm small, yet if you'd wanted an oak or a pine or a peach tree or even a lilac, you would have planted one. Since I knew you wanted a violet, I'm determined to be the best little violet I can be." --from Streams in the Desert by L.B. Cowman
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