An expectant heart

On my first day as a teacher almost fourteen years ago, my dad brought a new plant to my classroom. All these years I have kept this plant alive, which hasn't been an easy task since my thumb in no way resembles any shade of green.

This past winter I forgot about my plant one night during a severe freeze and accidentally left it out on the porch. I brought it in the next morning as soon as I remembered it, but it began to wilt immediately, and despite my desperate attempts to revive it, it looked dead within a few days. I know it was just a plant, but it meant something to me and I was really upset with myself for leaving it outside to wither and die in the freeze.

But even after all the leaves had fallen off, I noticed that at the very base of the plant there was still the tiniest bit of green. So I called the greenest thumb I know to ask her what I could do, and she said that if there was any green left at all, there was still hope. She advised me to use some root stimulator on it, water it, put it in a window, and then just hope for the best. So I complied, and then I waited.

At first I didn't have much hope at all. But as the days passed, I began to notice new growth----and then I truly began to hope. Before long I found myself believing that my plant would live.

A few weeks after that freeze, I was standing by the window one day looking at this plant. I pondered the new life sprouting up out of the dirt, and I thought about how this plant's circumstances had all but killed it, yet here it was, still alive. Then the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said You are like this plant. Your circumstances have all but killed you, but you are going to make it.

The Lord used my little plant blunder to increase my faith and to give me new hope thr0ugh His assurance that I am, indeed, going to make it. And not only will I make it, but I am going to thrive and flourish because my God is the ultimate Root Stimulator, and He looks after me with all the extra care and tenderness I need, that He may bring restoration and revival to my soul.

There is nothing like having real hope---the kind that has been poured straight out of God's own heart and into mine. Wonderful things are coming!

Hebrews 11:1  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.