The first letter of the alphabet of Love:
On the last morning she was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was one tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things [in this great desert].
She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.”
The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy.”
Much-Afraid thought of the things which she had seen in the pyramid: the threshing-floor and the whirring wheel and the fiery furnace. Somehow the answer of the little golden flower which grew all alone in the waste of the desert stole into her heart and echoed there faintly but sweetly, filling her with comfort. She said to herself, “He has brought me here when I did not want to come for his own purpose. I, too, will look up into his face and say, ‘Behold me! I am thy little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy.’”
— Hannah Hurnard, Hind’s Feet on High Places
![[flower]](http://cowpi.com/journal/media/2005/acceptance-with-joy.jpg "Golden-yellow flower named Acceptance-with-Joy")
Note: The image above is the same one on my cell phone. Last month I changed the caption from “Acceptance w/ Joy” to “Keep Hope Alive”.