“Oh, no! Watch out roses. Gene has a shovel.”
My husband enjoys growing rose bushes, but he is an impatient gardener. When the bushes don’t leaf out in spring as soon as he believes they should, he replaces them. One spring was no different. He dug up two bushes and tossed them aside. Upon examining them, I discovered tiny green spots on both bushes and replanted them in a different area.
Through the following weeks, I watched as more areas of the bushes turned green and sprouted tiny leaves. Soon, the bushes would bloom, and I would be rewarded with colorful, fragrant roses.
Sometimes we treat people as my husband does rose bushes. We look at those struggling with addictions or other problems and consider them to be of little worth. “They’ll never amount to anything. Why waste time on them?” we say.
Jesus had a different viewpoint. He told a parable about an impatient owner of a vineyard (Luke 13:6-9). The man waited three years for a fig tree to bear fruit, but it failed to do so. He told the gardener to cut it down, but the overseer pleaded with the owner for more time. The gardener wasn’t ready to give up on the tree.
Jesus knows the potential deep within the person we might be ready to dismiss as unworthy. He knows if they surrender their lives to Him, they will become vibrantly alive and bloom for the rest of their life. After all, He is the Master Gardener.
Perhaps I need to ask if I’m as concerned about people who have been “thrown away” by society as I was about the rose bushes tossed aside by my husband. What about you?
Help others find the abundant life Jesus offers.
(Photo courtesy of pixabay.)
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Norma C. Mezoe strives to be a Barnabas in her writing and in her living. Norma has been a published writer for thirty years and has written for magazines, devotionals, and S.S. literature. She is active in her small church as clerk, teacher, and bulletin maker. Norma may be contacted at normacm@tds.net.