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Sometimes the flower of surprise astonishes us by the unexpected way it grows. Orchids do. You look up and see a flash of fire on a brown tree trunk, or a handful of snow where no snow ever fell. On a night of some weariness I came upon an “orchid” called Chimham. “Chimham shall go over”; this unusual title of some verses in an old book caught the eye, and then this note: “Chimham—i.e., longing, from kamah), he longed—a word found only in Psalm 63:1, My flesh longeth for Thee.” Barzillai the Gileadite could not go over the river with David. “But behold my son Chimham, let him go over with my lord the king.” So it does not matter that we must wait for a while in Gilead. “Our ‘Longing’ shall go over, and dwell, O Lord, with Thee.”
Many of our South Indian orchids are very small, smaller than violets and even more inconspicuous, and yet one treasures them. That kind of little joy, treasured ever since, was found (or given, rather) the first time I was “doolied” up the Ghats. It was before the days of hill railway and motor; four coolies swung the traveler up the lovely mountain road, crooning as they ran at a steady jog-trot one of their ancient chanties called a yélum, because of its refrain, Yé, lé, lum, yé, lé, lé, lum.
It was an inspiring prospect that opened with every bend of the road, for though the mountains were steep they rose from a sunlit valley, and the air was full of the sweet noise of birds’ songs and whistles and calls, and the flowing of waters murmuring somewhere under the green. But I was not inspired. My breakdown in Japan had not encouraged the doctors to pass me for India. And now in this my first hot weather, “I give her six months,” said a hopeful medical worker. But I had thought my call was for life. To add to the depression of the hour there was the flatness that comes after fever; and the doubtless true but rather melancholy lines slipped into the yélum tune and sighed themselves over monotonously.
Thou shalt need all the strength that God can give,
Simply to live, my friend, simply to live.
Then suddenly like the blue flash of a kingfisher’s wing, like the quick flight of a flock of little birds, these words came flying through the wood: “I have as much grace for you as I have green for My trees.” And I knew that our Father had spoken to me as one might speak to a child.
The green of millions of trees, green as South Indian forests can be—fold upon fold of green velvet spread upon the mountains, vast and limitless like the sea—this was the setting of the new yélum. It was an inexhaustible word. I have often thanked our Lord of Love for that word. O Jesus, Lover of Thy least lovable, most foolish, least useful little child, we Thy little children thank Thee. Thou hast as much grace for us as Thou hast green for Thy trees, grace to help in time of need. Thou canst make something of the least of us. Thou canst make us to be “life, fire, wing, force.”