The Flower

Last year William and I went to visit our family.  My mom's birthday was coming up so she and I went to a local nursery to shop for flowers. She had birthday money to spend. My mom loves flowers. She has a green thumb which she inherited from my grandfather who could look at a flower and make it grow.

I, on the other hand, did not inherit that ability even though this year my flowers have survived the summer. They do need water right now but that will have to wait until tomorrow.  (Have your plants ever gotten so thirsty that the leaves start moving when you water them?)

Back to my story. Mom and I went to the nursery and started looking around. Soon she had picked out several flowers. I decided to be brave and find a plant or two that I could take home. I love gardenias so I first chose a healthy plant with a bloom that smelled wonderful. Sold.  I continued looking and a pot filled with yellow blooms caught my eye.  The flower was called purslane. I loved the color so I put in our cart that was filling up fast.

We finished, paid for our flowers and loaded up the SUV.  When we got back to Mom's house, we started unloading our treasures.  William walked out to help.  When he saw my gardenia bush and yellow purslane, he looked at me. I looked back with a smile.  William knows my history with flowers. 

Soon it was time to leave.  William and I drove home and then unloaded the truck. I grabbed the gardenia bush and the yellow purslane flower pot and found a home for each. During the summer, I learned that purslane blooms open during the day and close at night. I remembered to water the flowers, especially when they started to droop.



Yellow Purslane

Winter came. The cold weather got the best of the gardenia bush and the yellow purslane.  William had planted the gardenia bush near our mailbox by the road in hopes that it would recover. Didn't happen. No new leaves. Just dry, brittle branches. I think William finally pulled it out of the ground. I'm not sure. It may be by the mailbox still. And as for the beautiful, yellow purslane flower. It didn't survive either. We watched and waited but no new leaves or blooms. William finally dumped the dirt out of the pot.

That was the end of the yellow purslane or so I thought. Yesterday I went home for lunch. I got out of the car and started walking toward the front porch. A yellow flower caught my eye. I walked closer and couldn't believe what I saw. A single yellow purslane bloom was growing out of the crack between the brick wall and driveway. The flower that we had given up on and even emptied the pot had somehow survived to bloom another day.


My little yellow purslane bloom

Tears were in my eyes as I walked in the house.  The wonder of that single bloom from a flower pot that had not bloomed in over a year. What did it mean? What was God showing me? And this is what came to mind. We walk through times of joy and times of despair. We walk through times we don't understand. We walk through times when we want to give up or we want to give in. We wonder where is God. Why is He not doing something to help?

And then we remember... God sees and He knows. He is working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). The battle is His... not ours. 

So we must not lose hope when times get tough. We must keep trusting Him and the plans He has for us. I thought my yellow purslane flower was gone forever. But it wasn't. Somehow one small seed survived and one year later bloomed again. And looked where it bloomed. In between two hard surfaces. For all of us, there is a small seed that will one day bloom in victory. So don't give up. Let's fix our eyes on Jesus knowing that He is in control and trust in His timing.  Remember He loves us and He is on our side.

2 Corinthians 4:16-17 - "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."