One Plant, Two Seasons

When I was first gifted this plant from my mother, it looked like the image on the right…it was lovely! But, a couple of months ago, it looked like the image on the left, bare and leafless. I thought the plant was dead. So, one day I was weeding, cleaning my garden, and pulling out all the weeds and dead plants, and I moved to pick up the plant to throw it in the garbage, but God stopped me in my tracks. He told me not to throw it away but reposition it and move it to a different area of my garden. I kept it, not knowing God would use this plant as a lesson and His glory. From my point of view, this plant was no good, and here’s the picture to prove it. Anyhow, thank God for speaking to me at that moment because I would not have been able to take the image on the right today. If I had thrown away this plant, I wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty that was stored inside of it. Also, I wouldn’t have learned that it still had potential because the plant was in one season and lost all its leaves and flowers, but it was able to flourish once the season changed. Also, since I changed its location from being in direct sunlight to a shaded area, it was no longer exposed to too much of one thing (aka sunlight). 

God used this little plant to teach me these valuable lessons:

1. Just because you are one way in one season does not dictate what you will become in another.
2. Just because God’s gift doesn’t look like what you imagine, switch position.
3. Do not always trust your eyes. Lean not to your understanding of your circumstances, even though it looks terrible…give it time.
4. Do not judge your circumstances by their season.
5. God will remove us from direct exposure to a shaded area to protect and preserve what’s inside of us.
6. God’s timing is the only thing that matters.
7. Trust God through the process…everything in our lives will have different seasons. The change in seasons is edifying. 
8. Old leaves had to die off for new ones to grow. Growth is necessary.
9. What may have worked in one season may not work in another.

My dear friend, just because something may appear dead, there is still life when it is placed in the hands of the Lord. Trust the process and let God do the pruning and develop you as your seasons change. Keep these scriptures in mind the next time you want to throw God’s gift away:

Psalms 1: 1-3: Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot.

God Bless