If you read my blog, then you remember the post about the death of my beautiful plants. (boohooing at this point)  Today I finally took the dead things out off the porch into the backyard for burial.  It was actually going to be a cremation after I had salvaged all the dirt from the pots, and then pulled the useless, lifeless roots out and shook the remaining dirt over the yard.  (my Mom taught me to be frugal)

In memory of their once vibrant lives that brought such pleasure to me and other visitors to my backyard paradise, I took pics of them.

They used to have full green leaves until I left them out to freeze to death while I sunned on the Florida beaches.  I’m still somewhat ashamed, perhaps, a little.  That sun just felt so good; those waves were so wonderful.  Those plants were so far from my mind… until I got home and saw the little darlings.  I cut them back, ready for the dirt dumping.

As I was digging out the dirt, I noticed in the big pot that had held the rubber plant a small green thing.  What in the world?  A bug?

I couldn’t believe my eyes!  It was sprouting a new little leaf, way down at the base of the plant.  WOW.  So I checked the other corpse also waiting for cremation, and there it was:  LIFE.

As I stood there amazed at these little plants I had given up for dead, deemed useless to me and the world, was about to throw them out like the trash I had decided they were, God’s gentle, loving presence infused me with the knowledge that we are those dead plants.  Our lives can be destroyed to the point of death, and we still fight to live, beginning anew with the smallest step.  We decide who is useless to the world, who has had enough chances, who is too irritating, ugly, mean-spirited, drunk, drugged, or needy… and throw them out like trash.

But… (I always love this “but” part in the Bible) God is the giver of life, and though we see something dead or useless, God sees a sprig of beauty and new growth deep within the marrow of the soul.

Let us not throw away something precious until we look as closely as God looks.