Blog 2294 – 02.01.2022
Consider The Lilies
Jesus once told his disciples, who like most of us were anxious over where their food, shelter, and clothing would come from especially since they had quit their day jobs to follow him, that they should consider the birds how they neither sowed nor reaped but we’re provided for. He went on to say:
I am in my seventy-second year and I have spent a lifetime considering the lilies. Ten years ago I signed up to travel in my work and requested if possible that most if not all my work assigned be in places where the longest season was winter. I had had I thought quite enough of the heat and humidity of my long time home town of Houston, Texas. I spend my first twenty two years except for two years as a very young boy in Detroit, Michigan where dad had moved us because of the better work opportunities and my three year military enlistment (eleven months of which was my long hot summer in Saigon, Vietnam) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I was born, and where there were four almost equal seasons.
My mother, like most of the girls and women that I have known in my life, liked winter least of all the seasons and was always wishing it was the shortest season of all. She was always ready for the red, red robins to come bob, bob, bobbing along, signally that spring was just around the corner. I remember once hearing her say upon seeing the first robin that spring was just around the corner and my little brother Robert piped up, “Let’s go get it.” He loved my mother so much and like me wanted so much to please her and make her smile.
As I said, after spending over half of my life in the heat and humidity of the flat former rice fields of southeast Texas I longed for the mountain mamas I grew up surrounded by and the cold and snow of brisk winter days. I got my wish and spent that first winter on the road of 2012/2013 in snowy Baggs, Wyoming and Loveland, Colorado. Since then I have wintered, in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and twice more in Wyoming, and once more in Colorado. I even had an early taste of winter in Bemidji, Minnesota and on my last away assignment that ended just before Christmas in Wayne, Nebraska, where I even got to see a little snow before returning to Houston.
I will miss seeing not snow in the north country, but I will have a lot more opportunities to consider the lilies of the field where I am. I brought back an envelope of four o’clock seeds from Wayne, Nebraska where I saw four different colors blooming together last summer.
I have already prepared a flower bed in our backyard and planted the seeds. I have also planted some pink tulip bulbs that I hope will come up with the daffodils and gladioli that have already begun to send up their first green leaves.
Even on this the first day of February we have azaleas blooming, and Mexican petunias in our yard, yet it is the wild little pink grass flowers that thrill me the most, their seeds scattered by those birds Jesus asked us to consider even before considering the lilies. And I do daily as I sound out the words on the heart shaped motto I carry in my pant pocket. On one side it reads: “Thank you for this day, Spirit.” and on the the other, “I am Holy, I am Whole.” It is considering the birds of the air and those wonderful over-dressed lilies of the field that I am reminded that I am and have ever been as wholly provided for as they are by our loving and infinite source.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
Considering the flower strewn pathways I have known all my life,
David White
“Where Have All The Flowers Gone?”- Kingston Trio
theencouragingword 