Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Spiritual Lessons in Home Horticulture: Roots

My mom put a clipping from my spearmint plant in a small bottle of water to see if it would root. In the past 3 weeks, it’s vine-like stem stretched and curved upward as it grew centimeter by centimeter, unfurling small triangular mint leaves along itself, bending delicately toward the small space between my kitchen window and the curtain in front of it. Doing the dishes today, I glanced down and saw the thin, filmy tentacles of diaphanous roots stretching downward into the bottle. Roots.

The insignificant wisp of a clipping didn’t nourish itself to the point of regeneration with water it conjured from nothingness. The water was provided, much without its striving. All it had to do was keep it’s bottom-most point submerged in the life-giving stuff. The life was sustained; the growth born out of remaining submerged; the offspring brought forth as a by-product; the roots forged as anchors to hold it fast to its life source.

Lord, submerge me in Your life-giving streams, like a tree planted by the water. Let my spiritual life be sustained; my growth come from being submerged; the fruit I bear be the consequence of that. Let my roots go down, deep, anchoring me to the hope of who You are and what You’ve done. I am Your workmanship, born again in Your Son for the good works that will come when I remain plunged beneath the quickening coolness of Your mercy stream.


For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.-Ephesians 2:10

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