The Lesson of the Buttercup

"Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead,
and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God."
- Romans 6:13b

"Buttercups" by Lilias Trotter

"Look at this buttercup as it begins to learn its new lesson. The little hands of the calyx clasp tightly in the bud, round the beautiful petals; in the young flower their grasp grows more elastic -- loosening somewhat in the daytime, but keeping the power of contracting, able to close in again during a rainstorm, or when night comes on. But see the central flower, which has reached its maturity. The calyx hands have unclasped utterly now -- they have folded themselves back, past all power of closing again upon the petals, leaving the golden crown free to float away when God's time comes.

 

"Have we learned the buttercup's lesson yet? Are our hands off the very blossom of our life? Are all things -- even the treasures that He has sanctified -- held loosely, ready to be parted with, without a struggle, when He asks for them?

 

"It is not in the partial relaxing of grasp, with power to take back again, that this fresh victory of death is won: it is won when that very power of taking back is yielded; when our hands, like the little calyx hands of God's buttercups, are not only taken off, but folded behind our back in utter abandonment. Death means a loosened grasp -- loosened beyond all power of grasping again.

 

"Yes, practical death with Him to lawful things is just letting go, even as He on the Cross let go all but God. It is not to be reached by struggling for it, but simply by yielding as the body yields at last to the physical death that lays hold on it -- as the dying calyx yields its flower. Only to no iron law with its merciless grasp do we let ourselves go, but into the hands of the Father: it is there that our spirit falls, as we are made conformable unto the death of Jesus."

 

- Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Cross