Rooted in Good Works
BLAS BUSTAMANTE
On Listening, Divine Appointments,
and Good Works Yet to Bloom
In awe—but not surprised.
By now, I’ve learned not to question these impromptu meetings.
Just receive them with gratitude.
He stood watching me as I approached, still and open, like he had been waiting. There was something timeless in his presence. Gentle. Rooted. Like an old leather chair—worn smooth by the years, softened by a life of quiet service.
Not grizzled, but settled. The kind of weathered that welcomes. The kind that speaks of a life lived in devotion—unseen, perhaps, but not unnoticed by the deeper forces that move beneath the surface of things.
His small frame carried the weight of decades with grace, like a cloak passed down through seasons. And in his stillness was a warmth—an unspoken knowing—that his very presence was an offering.
It felt like a meeting arranged long before either of us knew it. As though we were arriving not by chance, but by some gentle pull from the invisible.
As I approached he said, “I noticed you looking closely at the world around you, with your camera. Seeing anything good?”
“Always. Everywhere,” I replied.
Following the usual introductions and pleasantries of strangers, he told me—softly, sincerely—that he had been called to this very spot, at this exact time, to share a message. He didn’t know with whom. Only that someone would come.
I smiled. That morning, in stillness, I had asked aloud, as I so often do, “Where should I go today?” And just behind my eyes, I saw it: the shape of a particular tree at a particular park.
The very tree we were now standing beside.
We stood quietly in the wonder of it. Not surprised, but reverent. As if we’d stumbled into a seam in the veil, a stitch in time already sewn.
And the message he’d been sent to give?
That the Creator wants to have a conversation with me. That I’m being invited closer. Daily.
At a crossroads in my journey, it was the exact message I needed to hear at this exact moment.
We walked for a time, sharing how we each commune with the Divine, the ways we listen. He told me he had been a landscaper for decades—planting trees, tending gardens, learning the quiet rhythm of growth.
A decade ago, a personal setback—he didn’t name it—had brought him to his knees. It was then that scripture came alive to him. Not as rules, but as reminders. Not as obligation, but as invitation.
He said the soil had always spoken to him. But after that moment, so did the Spirit.
I shared how each encounter I have with strangers—their faces, their stories, their unseen light—feels like a slow unveiling.
As if something sacred lies just beneath the surface, waiting to be revealed through the lens, through the listening. I never know what I’ll find, only that I’m meant to look.
Before we parted, Blas opened his Bible and read aloud:
Ephesians 2:10
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Then he smiled again, the kind of smile that knows more than it says.
I left changed—not by lightning or thunder, but by the quiet certainty that something sacred had unfolded in the ordinary.
And now, I wonder … What about you?
What “good works” were prepared in advance for you?
What conversation is waiting to be had?
And what calling … is calling you?
