Don’t you just love before and after pictures?
Before:
And After:
A little bit of a contrast, isn’t it?
When we first moved here in the middle of June, I put these plants in this pot. I didn’t add any new plants, I just faithfully watered them and plucked off the dead foliage to prevent it from taking the nutrition from the live flowers. They were in the perfect spot to receive both full sun and filtered sun, depending on the time of day. I was just hoping I could keep them alive through the summer, but they went bananas and three months later they don’t even resemble what they started out as.
All of this natural beauty. And yet the change could have been even greater if I’d added a little fertilizer to the mix every so often. You know, a little “crap”. Literally. The nutrients in the fertilizer would have probably doubled my outcome. I meant to fertilize, I just never remembered at the right time and never quite got around to it. Maybe today. 🙂
You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? The flowers that are our lives start out small. Physically, mentally, spiritually, socially, emotionally. With the proper care of just enough “water and sun” – the good things that nourish our lives – faith, family and friends – our blooms start to grow and multiply and become more vibrant in color. They bring beauty to the pot they are placed in.
But there is pruning that needs to be done every so often – getting rid of the old, the dead, the unhealthy – to make room for the new that will take its place. Though the thought of taking something off the plant seems counterintuitive to growth, it’s exactly what needs to happen so that only the healthy buds and flowers take over the entire plant. (If you’ve done this, you know what I mean – it’s like magic!)
Once in a while, to get the greatest growth, the most vibrant color possible, a little “crap” is thrown into the mix. You know, that fertilizer of life that stinks. Those things that are ugly, difficult and down right nasty. Situations that rock our planter as they are mixed into the regular, comfortable soil of our lives. To look at it from the outside, it doesn’t seem to be anything that could possibly add beauty. It’s dark, dank and smelly.
But then a little time goes by and you start to see something happening – something sprouting up out of this fertilized dirt. And then a little more and a little more until you realize that the pot is now fuller than before. That the flowers are a little taller and their beauty is spilling out all over the place. You have experienced growth in that “crap”. You’re not the same as you were before. You are more lovely than ever. Stronger.
The nasty stink helped create beautifully fragrant flowers.
I think I’m going to put a little fertilizer on all my plants today and watch what happens….
John 12:24 – Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
James 1:3 – For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.
Mark 4:8 – Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!
