I have six potted plants on my balcony, and it is amazing how the Holy Spirit of The Living God taught me some deep lessons which I am sharing with you here.
I got all six plants within two months. For ease of reference, I will name each of the pots in alphabetical order: Pot A, Pot B, Pot C, Pot D, Pot E, and Pot F.
Pot A
I bought this plant as a small-sized plant. I like the plant because I like plants that have green and thick leaves. The plant also has maroon-colored flowers which grow as tiny flowers on the stem of the plant. I like the contrast between the green leaves and the maron colored flowers.
I was attracted to the plant because I saw a matured version of this plant at the florist shop, and it looked luscious. I thought I should buy a small size one that will grow to become well-grown and beautiful in a short time.
I am still waiting for a short time for a well-grown plant. After two years the plant remains the same size. Not much growth and yet not stunted.
Pots B & C
The plants in both B and C pots are the same species but different in color. This plant has thin stems on which tiny flowers grow. I like the way the stems and the tiny flowers look. The plant in Pot B is predominantly reddish-brown with sprinkles of tiny white flowers. And the Pot C is predominantly white with sprinkles of tiny reddish-brown flowers. Again, like Plant A, I was attracted to the matured versions of both plants which looked beautiful at the florist shop. After two years, no noticeable growth in both plants, and yet both are not withered. I continue to water them daily and they are surviving until now.
Pot D
The plant in Pot D was matured when I bought it. Pot D was in full bloom. The flowers were all in royal blue and were a beautiful sight to behold. This plant adorned my balcony, and I would stand on the balcony and shower all my love on this plant.
Just looking at the plant emitted the most positive vibes in my brain. But after four months, the flowers began to wither. I was sad initially. The royal blue color began to turn to a golden shade. Today all the royal blue flowers have turned into a golden color. And the golden shade has turned out to be beautiful too. I feel very attracted to the golden color now and I feel extremely positive vibes when I look at the plant as a golden flowered plant with fresh green leaves just sprouting out on its dead stems.
Pot E
Pot E is a plant with green leaves and small round white flowers. It is a beauty too. Like Pot D, the plant and the flowers began to wither till they finally dried up and died. All the flowers became brown, and the stems became brown too.
I would say to myself, I need to throw these plants away because they have withered and appeared dead. But I never got round to throwing them out only because I was lazy to take them out of the pots.
In the interim, as a matter of habit, I would water the withered plants when I watered the other living plants; Not that I had expected a resurrection of the dead plants. And one happy day, I noticed new shoots were coming out from the dead stems of the plants. I had the shock of my life. I was excited beyond anyone’s imagination.
Dead Plants Come Alive
As I write, more leaves are growing out from all the dead stems in pots D and E. In Pot D, I cannot prune out the dead stems because the new shoots and leaves are growing out of the dead stems. And the leaves are growing very quickly. All the dead stems have very green leaves now. The leaves keep growing bigger every day. I cannot wait for the flowers to start coming out and blooming into royal blue flowers that attracted my attention in the first place.
However, with the Pot E plant, I was able to prune out the dead stems because the new shoots grew away from the dead stems in a way that allowed me to prune out the dead stems and leaves. Please don’t ask me how and why I was able to do this because I do not know. I am not a florist. All I know is that I could not prune the dead stems in Pot D with new growth while in Pot E, it was possible to prune the dead stems and flowers.
Pot F
Finally, Pot F had green leaves and a red flower at the top of the plant like a crown. The matured version of the plant was extremely beautiful so I got a mid-sized plant and hoped to see it grow and become beautiful like the matured version I saw at the florist shop. To my amazement, this plant did not grow, rather it hung on and gradually withered but never really died off. It grew pale in color and even though I nurtured it, it just refused to do well. So, from Day 1, this plant gradually deteriorated but did not completely wither and die off. It appeared the plant was suffering in pain. I was sad whenever I looked at the plant.
The Lessons from the different Plants.
The spirit of God ministered to me on the lessons from the different plants. The Holy Spirit reminded me of the parable of the sower in the bible who went out to sow seeds. According to the bible, Mathew: 1-9, 18-23, a man went out to sow some seeds and the seeds all turned out differently after they were sown all at the same time. The bible addressed four scenarios of the seeds sown and their outcome The Holy Spirit, in interpreting the plants on my balcony gave me a different spin than the Sower´s four scenarios in the bible. Please read the above Bible reference to get more details on the parable of the Sower.
From Pot A, the Holy Spirit says that because one sees a plant that is matured does not necessarily mean that if you get the same plant, your plant will do as well as the matured plant. In other words, every situation and every person is different. Because one is in a seemingly similar situation as another, does not guarantee the same outcome. Different factors go into play to have a specific outcome. As the factors differ in the play so also will the outcome in the play. So, the lesson here is to manage your expectations because things will not always turn out the same even though they look the same from a distance.
Pots B and C
Even though one provides all the support or nurturing in a particular situation, not much progress will be made. Both plants neither withered nor flourished. Life is sometimes like this. There is nothing one can do about it. You accept it and manage your expectations. It is what it is.
Pot D and E
Both plants appeared dead. But because I continued to water them, they came back alive. The import of the lesson is that one should never be too quick to give up on something or a situation that appears to be dying. If one is patient enough and keeps nurturing the situation, life can spring back with beautiful surprises. According to the Bible, Isaiah 40:31, ‘But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint’.
In addition to the lesson of patience in the D and E scenarios, it is important to note that even though both plants came back alive, they both did not have the same context. In context D, the new shoots needed the dead stems to come back alive, while in context E, the new shoots sprouted outside the old dead stems. Therefore, while the outcome of the two situations may be similar but the factors that went into producing such similar outcomes are very different.
Pot F
The lesson here is that this plant was destined to fail from the ‘get go’. This is what I call Dead on Arrival (DOA). From the moment I brought the plant home, the plant showed no Will to thrive. The more I nourished it, the more it got pale and paler and then dried up. And anytime I went by a florist shop, I see the same specie of this plant flourishing with its beautiful red crown.
And I would wonder what went wrong with my plant that it would not thrive like similar ones in the florist shop. And the Holy Spirit of God referred me to the Scriptures. Isaiah 45:9, ‘Woe to those who quarrel with their maker…..Does the clay say to the potter, ‘what are you making?’. The Holy Spirit said, there are certain things and situations that we cannot explain. It is just what it is and we accept them as such.
Conclusion
I conclude by saying that if we are more sensitive to the spirit, there are lessons in so many things around us from which we can learn some life-saving strategies. With the wisdom garnered from the different contexts above, one should learn to manage one’s expectations in life. As much as possible, one should try not to stress over certain situations. It is just what it is. I know this is easier said than done. But we must try.
May the Good Lord give us the wisdom and understanding to go through the different contexts in life that we find ourselves in so we can endure while we wait on God to address the context.
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