“I am the Vine, you are the branches….Separated, you can’t produce a thing.” John 15:5, The Message
Something is always blooming in my island neighborhood. Even if it’s not in my yard. As a wanna-be gardener, I have heard “stick it in the ground and see what happens.”
I took a broken off plumeria branch, planted it and it lived. And bloomed…once. Two years into this particular plant project, there was still no more of the annual blooms. So this Spring, I pruned big time and hoped. In less than 6 weeks, blooms arrived. And fragrance in my garden.
About the same time on a neighborhood walk, I picked up another broken off plumeria branch with buds that hadn’t had time to open. Into the garden pot it went and a week later, the buds opened and a new leaf was poking out.
I’m still a wanna-be gardener. What happened with the Plumeria’s wasn’t my work. Pure hope. And wonder in the work of our Maker Designer.
Both in my garden and yours, my life and yours, the Father is a master at picking up what is broken, dry, diseased, maybe discarded. God gently finds what we might ignore, cover up, or judge as waste. The Spirit is brilliant with grafting together or pruning and cutting away what is not right in us. The potential of the not yet opened blossoms is cultivated when given his care and attention.
Sit in your yard, go for a walk, dig in the dirt. Give thanks for God’s work in and for you. Take a bud or a broken branch to your neighbor. Maybe it will be the start of something new.
Be the Hope of Jesus.