Livi gave me this plant. It sits on my desk and as I click away at these keys, I sometimes look over and think of the sweetness of the gesture. Today, I looked over at the deadness. Dead lifeless leaves. Some even crisp. I touch them and they fall to a thousand tiny pieces of plant dust. You see, I’m not a very good plant person. Oh, I like them. I think they’re pretty. Plants give off oxygen and I’m partial to that. I’m just not a good tender.
So, I reach out to this plant and start pulling off the dead leaves. As I pick and pluck I notice that the more dead leaves I remove, the more new sprouts I see. The plant is actually transforming before my eyes. What looked dead only minutes earlier now looks healthy, alive, new. Now that the dead leaves are out of the away, I notice what could be a small part of the problem. It’s bone dry, Sahara-like. The soil surrounding the roots is rock hard and pulling away from the sides of the pot. I told you I wasn’t a good tender.
What makes things dry? Lack of moisture. Lack of liquid. Lack of water. I pick this poor baby up and walk her to the kitchen for a drink. I turn on the spigot trying to make up for all the times I didn’t water her. You know what happened, the water spilled over, the plate underneath the plant was wet, but the plant was still dry. After a bit, the plant started slowly drawing up the water. The plant sighed and you could almost see it smile. I apologized and told it I would do better. I told you I wasn’t a good tender.
This poor plant is not so much different than me. Left untended my poor heart does the same thing. There are occasions when my heart is so hard, it’s mostly dead, brittle. Yours too? When the cracking and splitting start, it’s because I wasn’t a good tender. The lack of water not only causes problems with the soil, it causes me to die. Maybe not like keel over, but die nevertheless. Remember, I’m not a good tender. When I fail to strip away the dead things, the things that make my heart hard – hurt, anger, frustration, envy, deceit, meanness, busyness, just a plain ole bad attitude, you name it, my heart hangs on to the deadness. The more I hang on to the deadness, the less likely I’ll have new growth. New growth can’t grow from something so hard.
The King of My Heart knew me before I was born. He certainly knew I would have tending trouble and therefore, have some heart trouble. I was born a sinner, still am one. He’s just the opposite of me, He’s all about the heart. He gave us a way to get rid of the dead things in our hearts so that the new sprouts could grow. He gave us a way to keep our leaves from becoming dry, brittle, dead, hard, fallen. He gave us The Way for new life, for fresh sprouts, for new beginnings.
“If you are thirsty, come to me! If you believe in me, come and drink!” John 7:37
God’s love for me survives, even when I fail to take in what will sustain me – Living Water. Regardless of my lack of heart tending, my dryness, my pulling away, when I sip, draw in the water of life, God gives me newness of life. The dry leaves that keep me from thriving are stripped away and underneath there are new sprouts.