The Healthy Christian Soul, 2025. Transcript From Flowers in Autumn Youtube.

The Healthy Christian Soul | A Peaceful Day Discovering Godlight In The Garden | #cslewis #psalm126

This is the transcript from the first video I ever created for Flowers in Autumn. Though, it was the second one I posted. For some time, I hesitated... as the notion that God might call me into something as peculiar and public as a creative venture on YouTube seemed, at best, unlikely. It was not until Easter of 2024—when I found myself deeply stirred by a Christmas gift: a collected volume of C.H. Spurgeon’s sermons—that the ‘calling’ began to feel less fanciful and more like obedience.

So this episode lived a long while in draft form. It was written, filmed, reconsidered, and written again over the course of a year before it at last took shape as something shareable. It required the proper time to escape its chrysalis.

The heart behind it—and indeed behind Flowers in Autumn as both blog and channel—is simple: to speak of God’s goodness through the rather untidy journey of my own life. I have learned that suffering, which appears at first to be only subtraction, is often God’s most mysterious instrument of addition. In health and ease, we nod politely toward heaven; in affliction, we cling to it. It is a strange mercy that when worldly comforts prove insufficient—when they cannot soothe or solve or steady us—we are at last quiet enough to listen.

There is a stillness that comes, not necessarily because we have pursued it, but because we can no longer survive in the clamor of the world.  And in that stillness, one begins to notice the ever-present yet unseen things: the quiet order of creation, the persistence of beauty–the unmistakable fingerprints of a faithful God upon both the world and one’s own soul. What begins in despair may, by grace, end in delight.

The particular devotional that most shaped this video was found in a volume of Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening, the same reading I shared aloud at my mountain baptism in August 2024. That summer held more trial—and more triumph—than I can neatly summarize here; some of its story lives on in our Life in Pictures Gallery: Summer 2024.

I know this much: I would not have endured these recent years without the steady, drawing love of my Savior. He has not only comforted me, but given my suffering direction and purpose. And it is my prayer that any weary traveler who happens upon this page might consider the same pursuit—to take Christ not merely as an idea, but as Comfort Himself—and so discover a rest the world cannot give.

. . .

Episode 2:

The Healthy Christian Soul | A Peaceful Day Discovering ‘Godlight’ in The Garden | #cslewis #psalm126

(A somewhat whimsical testimony of how we as Christians can daily pursue joy and hope amidst suffering. Join me for a peaceful and pensive day in the garden exploring the wisdom and words of Charles Spurgeon and C.S. Lewis–DISCOVERING THE GODLIGHT.)

Watch the Episode here:

https://youtu.be/5xL7c2LyI7Y

The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy. Psalm 126:3.

(From Spurgeon One-Minute Devotions Morning By Morning)

‘Some Christians are sadly prone to look on the dark side of everything. They dwell more on what they have gone through than on what God has done for them. But a Christian whose soul is in a healthy state will come forward joyously and say, "Let me tell you what the Lord has done in my life." It is true that we endure trials, but it is just as true that we are delivered out of them. It is true that we have sins that we are sorry for, but we also have an all sufficient Savior who overcomes these sins and keeps us out of their power. It would be wrong to deny that we have problems, but it would be just as wrong to forget that we come through our problems thanks to our almighty helper.’

I am one of these souls who is prone to look on the dark side of everything. As one who has known the personal griefs of chronic illness, I feel my joy is often robbed from me. That my prayers remain unheard or unanswered and my restless soul grows weary in these trials. My hope fades away from me….

To live in hope and believe in the love that God has for me, even in the darker valleys, the question I am learning to answer is: what might it look like to live my life day by day growing in the hope and trust and knowledge of my creator. To hold tight to the word, onto who it says God is and who we are in him, and onto the truths that are not dependent on my fickle feelings.

The word declares we are redeemed. We are saved. We are loved. We have even defeated death–not will, but have. It declares that our Lord is good and loving and kind. Even when we feel like we are forgotten, our feelings do not change his character. For his character is steadfast, and his love for us is also.

So if we find ourselves lost in our temporal struggles, we must remember our fathomless creator, not bound by our relation to time, has already seen us through every trial…  As I learn this truth in the word, I am learning also to open my eyes to all of the treasures that surround me every day as a practice of spending time in his goodness. I am learning to taste and to see.

From observing the glorious beauty and intricacy that is found in truly studying the scriptures, to those often overlooked yet ever present and beautiful things in the realm of creation around me. I am learning to grow my joy in the little moments to dwell in their beauty and whimsy and wonder…and is one who finds great healing in laughter…I also often dwell in their humor….

(Sorry about this…I sometimes cannot control my childlike sense of humor and the dog hair on the up-close flower shots was too funny not to comment on…and indeed to write a verse or two about.) : )

“Ode to dog hair. Oh, the dog hair that adorns the vibrant flowers. Each petal declaring passing hours. The paths tread with love and beauty by your side. Gently on the breeze they wave and

fly.

Ode to the wondrous flowers whose personalities often reflect ours.”

As CS Lewis famously observed: “We, or at least I, shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasion if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best our faith and reason will tell us that he is adorable, but we shall not have found him so, not have tasted and seen. Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are patches of god light in the woods of our experience.”

Observing these little wonders of God light lends strength to our belief. In the healthy Christian soul, even every flower and blade of grass demands notice of who he is as we taste and see God's goodness around us…For all of creation declares the glory of the Lord.

If only I stop my spinning and use my eyes to see…

Seeing the Buds, not Just the Blooms. Summer 2025. Original Photography.

~Verses for additional reflection~

Mathew 11:28

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives to you.

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”

-C.S. Lewis

1963 book, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer