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On the floor of my study this morning, just under big glass doors, the sun is dancing in light and shadow as the breeze stirs about in the glinty leaves of the aspen standing just beyond the wall. Bright pink petunias hang in baskets from the arbor, pansies turn their pretty faces to the sun, primroses steep in the warm light, and the geranium buds unfold practically as I gaze. This gorgeous spring morning is full of light and life and movement and growth and the mystery of ceaseless divine activity. I notice that these flowers and trees do not labor nor toil nor spin, yet how they are arrayed! They do not fret or strive. Rather, Life just flows through them taking many different shapes and colors and fragrances.

What sweet message is Nature breathing out this morning? Can our distracted mind hear it? How anxious we can be! How oppressed! How we stew in our negative juices and create distress, in and out! And yet soaked in the rapture of this beautiful morning, Nature in her myriad forms whispers how things really are.

Is it possible that we have not seen how things really are? What is it we are missing? Is it possible that the same Christ-stream that flows through the lily of the field flows through me too, developing and perfecting as it goes? Perhaps there is something that works just as spontaneously and mysteriously in us as it does in Nature.

Henry Drummond, a 19th century Scottish evangelist, comforts our mind about spiritual growth. He reminds us that we have the “divine germ” in us, as Christ does. He contrasts the fretting and slaving to build the Christian moral character with truly attaining the Christ-like nature. He says:

“For the Life must develop out according to its type; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ. Morality, at the utmost, only develops the character in one or two directions. It may perfect a single virtue here and there, but it cannot perfect all. And especially it fails always to give that rounded harmony of parts, that perfect tune to the whole orchestra, which is the marked characteristic of life. Perfect life is not merely the possessing of perfect functions, but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to each other and all conspiring to a single result, the perfect working of the whole organism.”

He observes that he who thinks to approach the mystical height of the Christ-like nature by anxious effort is really receding from it. He does grant that by hard work and self-restraint a man may attain to a very high character, but what is missing is the true Christian process, that mysterious quality that is difficult to define, but is the test of spiritual birth – that you cannot tell from whence it comes or whither it goes – but which seems to rise up from some fount within:

“The otherworldliness of such a character is the thing that strikes you; you are not prepared for what it will do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off center, and in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills you always with awe. A man never feels the discord of his own life, never hears the jar of the machinery by which he tries to manufacture his own good points, till he has stood in the stillness of such a presence.”

Spiritual growth, he says, is a process maintained and secured by a spontaneous and mysterious inward principle, not manufactured by the person himself. Of course we want to know right away just how such a character is developed, if not according to the usual prescription, as he says, of more earnestness, more prayer, more self-denial, more anxiety, or more Christian work. Strangely, these do not always produce what we are after. “These are,” he continues, “prescriptions for something, but not for growth. Not that they may not encourage growth; but the soul grows as the lily grows, without trying, without fretting.” He advocates a return to the simplicity of Nature.

For, like the lily, God has already taken us in hand: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). That is to say, even the good works we do come from Him; in fact, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10; see also Moroni 10:25 – “For if there be one among you that doeth good, he shall work by the power and gifts of God”).

No, with respect to spiritual growth, there is an attitude which the true Christian must cultivate. First of all, that attitude is primarily to be free from care and to preserve a tranquility of the spiritual mind. We must seek to let the Creative Hand alone, to stay out of the way. For, indeed, it is He that giveth the increase (see 1 Corinthians 3:7).

Of course Drummond does not advocate “inactivity of the spiritual energies,” but rather emphasizes how important it is to realize, since we cannot manufacture our own soul, that we live and move and have our being in the Lord’s Sun and in the Lord’s Dew; that, in fact, these powers go in search of us and that we may feel how they press themselves unweariedly upon us.

Man’s work, therefore, is to heed the voice that says, “Be still,” and then to allow grace to play over him, to be still therein and know that this is God. It does seem that “some of the most anxious people in the world are Christians – who misunderstand the nature of spiritual growth.” In their anxiety, life, even for the most earnest, becomes an exercise in self-condemning and condemning others. What happens is that these spiritual energies, which are meant to be spent on the work of Christ, are instead “consumed in the soul’s own fever.”

But in reality, the life of the disciple of Christ can become very simple – he need only hold his mind to one main idea: to abide in Christ, to be in position: “God gives the wind, and the water, and the heat; man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his water-wheel in the way of the river, puts his piston in the way of the steam; and so holding himself in position before God’s Spirit, all the energies of Omnipotence course within his soul. . . . Such is the deeper lesson to be learned from considering the lily. It is the voice of nature echoing the whole evangel of Jesus, Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.'”

Of course there must be doing, but the doing must flow from the tranquil mind, seeking nothing for itself in the doing; rather, open to present beauties, desiring to bless this moment with Peace. So, it appears then that for one to grow up in Christ, one need only yield to that flow of energy and life that leads from one blessing to another, that opens the eyes to Divinities. The fruits of this awareness may keep us just as busy as a person who is trying to save himself by his own works, but it will have a different flavor, a sweeter fragrance, a deeper serenity. Life is happening through us. Let us stand back and let the Christ-stream flow.

Henry Drummond (1851-1897): “Growth,” Natural Law in the Spiritual World; Kindle edition. All quoted material in this column is from this chapter. The quote on unfolding into a Christ may be found in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p 346.