And so a peony blossom suddenly appeared one morning in my untended flower garden.

Of course, God’s fingerprint can be found within every living thing, but was God’s Holy Spirit wind hovering over this flower, asking me to notice His hope through this blossom?

God made plants that I thought were dead or non-existent to bear beautiful blossoms three times this spring – amaryllis, lilac, and now this peony.

What was He saying? I sat up a little straighter in my seat, adjusted my tie in my executive-looking suit and sharpened my pencil, ready to hear the encouragement from God that I knew was my due. His reply knocked the legs out from under my chair, and I landed back on the floor where I belonged.

God showed me a picture of Him trying to give this peony to someone else because I wouldn’t take it.

The message was that I was receiving this gift from God not because I had something inherently unique in me. I was receiving this metaphorical flower because I was available. And the leeches of arrogance that had somehow covered me again had to be pulled off one by one, painstakingly, as I sat on the floor, having fallen off my stool of self-righteousness again.

God will use anyone available.

He doesn’t use little Jesus look-alikes. The ones who view themselves this way are so covered in leeches that we can’t see any reflections of the light of God in them anymore. I’m not special, He was reminding me.

Jesus is.

Would I follow him out of the barren garden and take this message that He was offering me in the form of a peony to others?

Because if not, he would offer this flower to another.

This thought felt a bit like a sucker punch to me, but one that would remind me to put away the robes of self-righteousness that I so cleverly fashioned and to dress myself again in the beautiful royal attire of the robes that He purchased for me, to put on the signet ring of the authority of his kingdom that he offers to each one of us should we have the humility to dress like a child of the king.

And now that I dress this way, will I get to work scrubbing the filth I encounter with living water? Jesus’ sleeves are rolled up, and we smile together as we rub shoulders, cleaning together and doing the work He has called me to join him in. Will I do it?

Will you?

What exactly I felt God calling me to will be discussed another time, but perhaps what doesn’t matter. It’s more about the yes. If I am available to follow Jesus on the journey He leads me on, we can expect a trail of blossoms to follow our lives.

Are you available when you hear Him whisper?

Have you time to find the royal princess shoes He gave you that are stuffed in your closet  behind so many other pairs of shoes it will take a bit of work to find them? Will you step down the rungs of the spiritual ladder of self-importance you’ve been climbing, too? Or if a cloud of self-hatred surrounds you, will you climb up the spiritual ladder to meet Jesus?

In either direction, He’s waiting there for us, ready to give us His love and the strength to complete our spiritual assignments if we remain shoulder-to-shoulder with Him.

Are you available for a cup of tea, a sharing of the heart, and the healing balm he offers? Come on! Let’s go!

And so the astonishing reason God feels far away is because we won’t receive the flower blossom He offers us.

By faith, Noah . . . acted on what he was told [by God]. . . As a result, Noah became intimate with God.

The Message

The astonishing surprise of Jesus is that he desperately wants us to follow Him on a journey to learn to garden with Him so that blossoms arrive unexpectedly in our world, but He doesn’t need us in particular. (It’s not about us.) Let’s not waste the opportunity.

Come on!

Let’s try flying!

God, help us to long to receive what You offer.