Love Stirred by an Aspen Tree

While in the heights of the Colorado mountains last week, I wrote…It was the smallest little aspen tree that just rebuked me, and took my heart by surprise by its soft scolding. As I watched it avail itself to the breeze, leaves whipping to and fro so vulnerably, the message came so clearly to me. It was a pleading, a reaching, a beseeching as this tree did for me the one thing it was fashioned to do—awaken a heart to love Him. Without words and without speech, its voice came so clearly, as though shaking me awake to say,

“Please, please, remember Him. Please, please, love Him. Please, adore Him and please do not forget Him. Please do not walk about your days as though He was far or distant or removed when every tree and every flower, every breeze and every stream was love offered to draw you” (Ps. 19:3, 4).

It was then I remembered what He wrote upon my heart so long ago. Back when I first believed, back when I had nothing else to tell me otherwise, no argument to sway me, and no ‘better judgment’ to persuade me. It was then that He told me this secret, and then that I believed. He told me that every flower was for love, every rain drop was out of desire. Every tree and every breeze had no higher purpose than the drawing of the human heart, the warming of the cold soul, the awakening of the sleeping person. And I believed. It was then that every flower became for me a messenger and every rainfall a heralder of His love. I knew no indifference in those days when these messengers crossed my path. As though they were kissed by the Creator before being planted or poured upon my path, like arrows they would pierce me.

And now today, this little aspen tree, sitting well beneath the strong and towering pines above, aroused me with its pleading. As though using all its might to awaken me, every leaf spun ‘round at the stirring of the wind, softly rebuking me for my indifference to such extravagance. Its beseeching finally stirred me to the remembrance  of His pursuing love and brought me again to the place of communion, of responding, of the holy: “I love You too.”

For surely the voice of my Beloved Jesus does not grow more silent over time but my heart, so prone to dullness, grows less willing to heed His every means of conveying His voice to me. And today I remember what I had forgotten and lovingly return once more to the childlike heart that so readily receives.

Today I am indebted to a little aspen tree, who for joy of its Creator, reached its limbs and spun its leaves to stir up love in me.