About two years ago, a friend gave me a plant. She said it was a flowering begonia though it had never bloomed while she owned it and the person who gave her the slips from the parent plant had never seen a bloom on hers either.
It seemed, to all concerned, that this plant had been named incorrectly. After all, indoor plant books said that some begonias did not produce flowers.
However, whenever we spoke of this plant, we continued to call it a flowering begonia. Before I transported the plant to my own home, my friend took some slips from it and rooted them. They grew well but still no flowers came.
It was a beautiful plant that had shiny green leaves with pink undersides. It grew in height and was strong and healthy. No need to be sorry that it had no flowers. This was just not to be and it gave me great pleasure as it was.
Then, one day in July of this year, I walked past the plant and, from the corner of my eye I saw flowers. I doubled back to take a second look. Sure enough, there was a spike of pretty pink flowers growing out from between two leaves.
“It is a flowering begonia,” I said, out loud to myself. “We didn’t name it incorrectly after all.”
Sometimes, we just have to have faith in life. Even though we don’t see flowers on the flowering begonia doesn’t mean it isn’t a flowering begonia, it just hasn’t come to its full maturity yet.
Even though we don’t see all the fruit of the spirit in ourselves or in others yet, doesn’t mean that we or they aren’t spiritual beings, we just haven’t come to full maturity of the spirit yet. We have to keep faith in life and in the spirit that we are moving toward that end with Jesus beside us and within us.
3 comments:
Thank you for another lesson from nature, Judith. How rich these lessons are.
As I neared the end of your post, the thought occurred to me that the Lord has called us to be fruitful, and that generally, fruit-bearing follows flowering (if my limited knowledge of such things is on track). And even in garden flowers, the seed develops as the flowering stage nears its end. The beauty of the flower fades before the (often) less showy lusciousness of fruit is ready to be harvested and enjoyed.
Thanks Peter for the added value of your comments to my blog. We all need to remember that growth takes time and patience and, yes, that the flower fades before the fruit comes. As John the Baptist said, I must decrease while Christ increases. And so the fruit of the spirit grows in us while we decrease in importance in our own eyes.
Amen and Amen, Judith!
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