e setting free of every seed as it ripens--how He brings across our
path the soul who needs the very lesson He has just been teaching
us--how the chance comes with perfect naturalness of reaching another
over whom we have been longing. If our eyes are up, and our hands are
off--if we learn to "wait on our ministering" like the seeds, in
utter dependence on Him, we shall be able constantly to trace the
Lord's working with us, and we shall have done with all the old
restless striving to make opportunities--"We are labourers together
with God."

Yes, it all centres round that question of quietness. "Opportunity"
is given to every seed in its turn, as they lie in their layers in
the capsule, or side by side in the pod. Not one forces its way
forward, or gets in the way of another. Look at the exquisite fitting
in any seed-vessel that you pull to pieces: the seeds are as close as
they will go, but fenced off from crowding on each other and
hindering each other's growth. He who packed them can be trusted,
surely, with the arranging of our lives, that nothing may jostle in
them, and nothing be wasted, for we are "of more value" to Him than
these. If our days are a constant rush and hurry, week in and week
out, there is grave reason to doubt if it is all God-given seed that
we are scattering. He will give us no more to do than can be done
with our spirits kept quiet and ready and free before Him.

Quiet and ready and free--that is another lesson that the seeds teach
us. Off they go at a touch, at the moment when the inward
preparedness and the outward opportunity coalesce. See the tiny
corkscrews of the pink geranium in our meadow (a miniature of its
blue brother the cranesbill). Look at the poise of them--and then at
the sheaf of spears of this bit of grass, holding themselves freer
still, and the downy head alongside, equally ready either to hold
together or to fly with a breath ... and then look at our lives and
see whether that is their attitude towards the Holy Ghost. Is there a
soul poise that corresponds?

Oh! the pains that God has to take to bring us to this happy,
childlike "abandon," equally ready for silence, or for saying or
doing unhesitatingly the next thing He calls for, unfettered by
surroundings or consequences. How much reserve and self-consciousness
have to give way with some of us, before the absolute control passes
into His Hands, and the responsibility with it! Then only can we know
the "liberty," the