The Light Upon the Leaves

When the world is no longer something to possess, it becomes something to behold.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”

— Matthew 6:28

There are moments when the world seems to ask nothing of us.

Sunlight falls through the branches of a tree and breaks upon the leaves. A flower opens its petals. Shadows move slowly across the ground. The wind stirs what a moment before had been perfectly still.

Nothing announces itself.

Nothing demands to be noticed.

And yet there it is.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons we so rarely experience wonder: we have learned to approach the world by asking what can be done with it. What can be used, understood, acquired, improved, photographed, explained, or possessed?

But there is another way of seeing.

It is simply to gaze.

Christ says, Consider the lilies.

He does not say: understand them.

He does not say: make something of them.

Look.

There is an extraordinary freedom hidden within that command.

A petal illuminated by the afternoon sun has no need to justify its existence. The leaves trembling above us are accomplishing nothing that we would ordinarily call important. Their beauty is almost extravagant precisely because it seems unnecessary.

And perhaps that is why they speak so powerfully of God.

They exist because He delights that they exist.

For one brief season a flower opens beneath a sky immeasurably larger than itself. Perhaps no human being will ever see it. Still it blossoms.

The sun touches it.

The rain falls upon it.

God sees it.

That is enough.

There is a magnitude hidden within such stillness.

The smallest leaf contains mysteries we could spend a lifetime studying and never exhaust. Light has crossed an incomprehensible distance only to fall, at this particular moment, upon this particular branch. Beneath our feet the earth is turning silently through a universe whose dimensions the mind can scarcely hold.

And yet here we are.

Standing beneath a tree.

Looking at light.

This is wonder.

Not the discovery of something rare, but the sudden recognition of what has always been before us.

Perhaps much of the spiritual life consists in recovering this gaze.

The Fathers went into the desert not because creation was empty of God, but because the human heart had become too crowded to perceive Him. Silence restored the eyes. Stillness taught them again how to receive what simply is.

And gradually the world ceased to be ordinary.

Water.

Bread.

Fire.

Stars.

The face of another human being.

The Name of Jesus whispered in the darkness.

Everything could become an occasion of encounter when the heart ceased grasping and began beholding.

Desire itself is purified in this way.

At first desire wants to possess what is beautiful.

Wonder teaches desire to remain before it.

To love without consuming.

To receive without taking.

To gaze without needing to hold.

And perhaps this is how desire finally begins to resemble prayer.

For God Himself cannot be possessed.

He can only be received.

We stand before Him as we stand before sunlight trembling upon leaves: unable to contain the mystery, unable to explain its fullness, knowing only that something infinitely greater than ourselves has drawn near.

Then prayer becomes very simple.

Lord, teach me to see.

Deliver me from the restless need to possess what You have given me only to behold.

Let me notice the light upon the leaves,

the opening of the flowers,

the movement of the wind,

the silence beneath all things.

Let their beauty awaken in me not the desire to seize,

but the desire to adore.

Give me again the eyes of a child,

for whom existence itself is astonishing.

And when I have forgotten how to wonder,

bring me back to something small—

a leaf,

a petal,

a shaft of afternoon light—

and let me remain there long enough

to remember:

You are here.

The world is here.

I am here before You.

And for this moment,

nothing more is needed.