A sweet friend at church handed
me a plastic bag with what appeared to be a ball of dried moss in it.
“It’s a resurrection plant,” she
said smiling.
I turned the plastic bag over in
my hand—a house plant. I’m terrible with indoor
plants. Any self-respecting flora better watch itself if it enters my house. I
brought the bag home and put it aside thinking I would wait to plant it when I
brought other plants inside before the first freeze. It stood a better chance
of making it if it wasn’t alone. Safety in numbers—that sort
of thing.
A couple of
weeks later, my friend asked me about it. “How’s your plant doing?”
I told her my plan. "I was afraid I’d forget to
water it and it would die.”
She studied
me a moment. “It can go years without water.”
What? Hope
sprang in me. If I couldn’t kill it, this was a plant with my name on it.
I went home
and looked at the instructions inside the bag. Turns out you don’t plant it but
put it in a bowl of water. The plant has to be rinsed and the water changed every day for the first week, then you occasionally add water or let it go back
to sleep.
It can go fifty
years without water.
The
surprising thing is it literally opened before my eyes unfurling its tendrils to the water and light. Here are pics after the
first five minutes, the first hour, and a few hours later.
If you don’t
water it, it curls into a ball again. But somehow, it retains enough water to
keep it alive for decades.
Over the
past couple of years, if you’re like me, at times you may have felt as if you
were curling into a ball, your life-giving hope leaking out. The resurrection plant has
specialized fluid-conducting tissues that help bring it back to life. We are
designed spiritually so that all it takes is being open to the water of God’s
spirit for us to spring alive.
Jesus said,
“. . . whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water
I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life”
(John 4:14).
The apostle
Paul wrote, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether
Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink”
(I Corinthians 12:13).
But we do
have to make a choice. Jerry is fond of saying, “I want to sit near the spout
where the glory comes out.”
What he
said. We must position ourselves so that we are in a place to receive what the
Lord is offering. Like the plant, we need to drink.
I love it when God reveals an aspect of His glorious purpose through His creation and thanks to my friend for this amazing and instructive gift.
Beverly Varnado is the author of several small town romances from Anaiah Press including her latest, A Season for Everything. All are available at Amazon. A memoir, Faith in the Fashion District, from Crosslink Publishing is available wherever books are sold. Also consider her other books, Give My Love to the Chestnut Trees and Home to Currahee.
To explore the web version of One Ringing Bell, please visit bev-oneringingbell.blogspot.com
Beverly Varnado copyright 2021