This morning, I asked the Lord where I should go, He told me to start walking towards the city-center inside the moat. I have no idea where I am going, but I have this feeling that I am looking for a coffee shop surrounded by a garden. I start walking, pretty soon I am speed walking towards the moat, when a flower catches my eye. I stop to admire and smell the flower. Then I am reminder by the Lord that too often in life I speed walk to the next thing, the next adventure; I need to slow down and admire the little things—smelling flowers.
I continue to walk slowly to find this coffee shop in the garden. I stop to admire and smell the flowers along the way. I still don’t know where I am headed, but since flowers are on my mind I decided to follow the street that has the most flowers on it. I follow the flower lined moat for a while before turning inward to the center. I continue following the flowers until I realize that there are no flowers, so I keep on walking. As I walk I run into a group of Chinese tourists, I try to pass them but when I go to pass them I realize that I am once again speed walking. I NEED TO SLOW DOWN, ENJOY THE WALK, LOOK AROUND, AND SMELL THE FLOWERS.
I continue walking, very conscious of my pace, looking around for this coffee shop in a garden. Nothing. By this point I have walk to the other side of the moat, the moat is about a one-mile by one-mile square. I begin to head towards the bottom corner of the moat when I walk past flower shops, only these flower shops sold fake flowers, not real ones. God reminds me that a lot of people are like fake flowers. They look nice, they are always green, they never need care, but they don’t smell. They look pretty but lack any depth and beauty.
I still continue to walk, at this point I have been walking for almost an hour and have walked about 3 miles. I start heading towards a park in the bottom corner of the moat, as soon as I enter the park I see a small coffee shop called ‘Café de Garden’. I know this is the coffee shop I have been looking for. I enter and order an iced green tea frappe. I sit down and begin to write down some blogs from last month (India). As I wrote the stories and words just came to me, and before I realized I had written 3 blogs from India.
My ministry for that day looked completely different from what I had expected. I wasn’t talking to college students or gamers or any of my squad mates, my ministry for the day was writing down stories and thoughts about what God taught me in India.
