There is a great and beautiful book that I want to share with you. I return to it every few years for renewal (self-renewal). Hinds’ Feet on High Places* allegorizes our spiritual journey so tenderly, and here and there are some rich nuggets I’d like to highlight in the posts to come.

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Once the Shepherd stooped and touched the flowers gently with his fingers, then said to Much-Afraid with a smile, “Humble yourself, and you will find that Love is spreading a carpet of flowers beneath your feet.”

Much-Afraid looked at him earnestly. “I have often wondered about the wild flowers,” she said. “It does seem strange that such unnumbered multitudes should bloom in the wild places of the earth where perhaps nobody ever sees them and the goats and the cattle can walk over them and crush them to death. They have so much beauty and sweetness to give and no one on whom to lavish it, not who will even appreciate it.”

The look the Shepherd turned on her was very beautiful. “Nothing my Father and I have made is ever wasted,” he said quietly, “and the little wild flowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them. Just as though they sang a joyous song to themselves, that it is so happy to love, even though one is not loved in return.

“I must tell you a great truth, Much-Afraid, which only the few understand. All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and it most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at. Every inner response of the human heart to love and every conquest over self-love is a new flower on the tree of Love.

There is something down deep that knows this is true, for human recognition never fully filled a person. But we know that our Father who sees what is done in secret will reward us, will notice, will glory in us as we do in Him.¹

Every mundane thing we do that seems so thankless and/or pointless, every time we are put out and not thanked for it, let us recall the instruction to “live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands.”² It is so worth it, dear ones, to give and to love in this way.

*by Hannah Hurnard

¹Matthew 6:4

²1 Thessalonians 4:11