Flower of the Autograph Tree
Good Evening God,
I think this is only the second time I’ve the flower of the autograph tree. The trees are everywhere and I often see the round hard fruit . . . but the actual flower? Hardly ever! The first time I saw one . . . I looked for others for days afterwards . . . checking each tree. But, as time went on I gave up looking. I stopped HOPING to see one. And without hope, I stopped looking.
So, how did I see THIS one? I parked right in front of it! I was in sight through my windshield. It was A Gift!
All of this makes me think about Hope. Vaclav Havel said “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” I like that. It reminds me of how when our daughter Patty was in the hospital at Stanford — so long ago, but it seems like yesterday — I told the doctor, “The battle is not between Life and Death, we all die. The real battle is between Meaning and Meaninglessness.”
Meaning is the way into our Hearts and Minds, isn’t it God. You designed us that way. And I think it was Viktor Frankel who observed that then we don’t have Meaning we turn to Power or Pleasure.
As I look around me . . . well, yes, at myself, too . . . I can see that most of us here in the West are motivated by pleasure . . . or power. Thankfully a fair number of us ARE motivated by Meaning. The trouble is we humans do get discouraged. We don’t understand that it isn’t about outcomes. It is about keeping on and on and on with those things that Do Make Sense!
Story teller,
A Moment with God 
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