Some days there doesn’t seem to be much to encourage. Hope is dim. People with their needs feel like a crushing, inescapable weight. I know I am not alone here. We have all felt that burden in one form or another.
On one of those days, I noticed a flower blooming beside my front porch, almost hidden. Several summers ago, my mom gave me plants as a birthday gift. I do not have a green thumb, so most did not survive. I had given up entirely on this one. But there it was, a beautiful purple clematis, barely showing from underneath the leaves. Something about finding it there, in such an unlikely place, after so long a time, touched my heart. Isn’t hope a lot like that?
I easily forget that when things look dead, lifeless, and hopeless, underneath and behind it all, God is still working. God doesn’t give up on His children. He remembers the good seed planted so long ago that we have forgotten we had ever planted it. We counted it as a lost cause.
Since finding that flower, I have had other dark days, days I forgot to hope. But I think of it often, and it reminds me of three things. First, it reminds me to trust God. Sometimes, all I know to do when life looks hopeless is to trust God and do the next thing. The next thing might be as simple as getting out of bed when I am tempted to roll over and play dead. It might be washing a load of laundry, helping my child with a school project, or babysitting my grandbabies. It is not always some big, glamorous service, but it counts.
Then, discovering the flower reminds me that as dark as it might be right now, this life is not all there is. No matter what happens, our best life is not here and now. As Christians, we have an eternity in Heaven with our Father to look forward to.
Finally, it reminds me always to try to plant good seed. Plant good seed by reading God’s Word and hiding it in your heart. Plant good seed by sharing with your kids what God has done for you in the past and how He answered your prayer yesterday. Plant good seed by speaking kindness to the ones who are in your path. And plant good seed by much prayer.
It might not be obvious to us what God is doing. Often it is not. Hope is, after all, not seen. Romans 8:24-26 says: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”
So on the days when, humanly speaking, there is no fixing it, no getting out of it or around it, know that this is not all there is. There is a better life ahead. Know that by His grace, we can trust Him and do the next thing. (And if the next thing on some days is only rest, that’s okay too.) Know that good seed grows. God is the best gardener. He is wise and patient. Someday, you will see the harvest, and it will be worth everything. One day, you will find your flower blooming, beautiful, and precious, in a place where there was nothing left to hope for at all.
by Kelli Bachara 
by Caitlin Henderson 
