Week 28: THE LITTLE WILD FLOWERS

A dear friend reminded me last night that signing up to follow Christ is not signing up for ‘the love boat cruise.’  We face opposition, struggle, pain, and suffering.  Some battles we fight and win openly, others are more like the little wild flowers that Hannah Hurnard describes so poignantly in her allegory Hind’s Feet for High Places – the ones that no one knows about.  This story came back to me this morning in my quiet time – and I wanted to share it with you. 

{A brief introduction, if you’re unfamiliar with the story:  Much-Afraid is a girl who desperately wants to climb to the top of the mountain to be with the Shepherd, a type of Christ.  She struggles with fear, and the fact her feet are not capable of making such a journey.  Shepherd promises her if she would follow him, he would make her feet like hind’s feet on high places (see Habakkuk 3:19).}

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, nor 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 little 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 its 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. Many a quiet, ordinary, and hidden love, unknown to the world, is a veritable garden in which Love's flowers and fruits have come to such perfection that it is a place of delight where the King of love himself walks and rejoices with His friends. Some of My servants have indeed won great visible victories and are rightly loved and reverenced by other men, but always their greatest victories are like the wild flowers, those which no one knows about."