Green Leaves

The Planting of the Lord

By William M. Self, Sr.

 

This unimpressive plant sits day after day in our living room

We water, feed, and trim it

Once a year for a few short hours it blooms and fills the room with glory

Don’t despise the day to day faithfulness

Your moments of glory will be worth it

 Green Leaves

When I was a boy, my grandparents had

 a plant called a Night-Blooming Cereus.

Around the end of July, the beginning of

 August, the Night-Blooming Cereus would bloom.

As the bud would develop, my grandparents

 would get the word out to the family.

When it looked like it would be the night

when this bud would open, we had a party.

My grandfather would rig lights up in the backyard;

 focused on center stage, this bud of the Night-Blooming Cereus.

My cousins and I would go to the corner

carryout before it closed and buy 32 oz. bottles

 of Cadillac pop cream soda for 10 cents.

As the sun would set, this bud would begin

to open and release a wonderful fragrance.

By morning this beautiful flower would be wilted and dead.

 

This year, 50 years later we had our first

 Night-Blooming Cereus party with

our grandchildren, with two blooms…

From a start of the original plant my Grandparents had.

The plant has sat in our living room for

years, it is not a good looking plant.

 It has long green leaves and suckers that need

to be trimmed out from time to time.

Day after day it soaks up the sun

and takes its nutrients from the soil.

It grows, but there is nothing impressive.

Day after day it sits in our living room unimpressive.

Until the night of its bloom,

 which only lasts a few short hours.

Our lives can seem like that, day

after day with no moments of glory…

Just reading God’s Word, praying and looking

for God to do something special in our lives.

Then when the hour of glory

comes it only lasts a short time.

You and I are like the Night-Blooming

Cereus sitting in God’s living room.

God feeds us and nurtures us and our

leaves are green and don’t wither.

Then in the middle of the night our hour comes.

Be faithful day to day…

Growing green leaves may not be very impressive.

But if you keep your leaves green,

 you will bloom and give God glory.

 

Scripture Reading

Isaiah 61:3 NIV

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the Lord

Psalm 1 NIV

1 Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!

They are like chaff

that the wind blows away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.