From Where Do You Seek Your Water???

     When Hubby went home to heaven, I was charged with the responsibility of caring for his many plants.   Forget about helping them grow.   Those first few months, the real challenge was just keeping them alive.   Like a true amateur, I watered each and every one to the state of drowning.   Let me just honestly admit, they were floating in mud, not strongly rooted in rich soil.   Many a time, I, ignorantly, expressed gratitude that the flower pots each came equipped with a saucer for all the runoff water.   Occasionally, there was an overflow flood; but, for the most part, the saucers prevented a deluge.   Not till I talked with the county’s revered green thumb did I realize my knowledge, not my thumb, was green when it came to plants.

     My way of watering was not nurturing Hubby’s plants.  It was, literally, drowning them.   However, the real death knoll to them was my abundant watering was cutting off the plant root’s air pockets.   Simply stated, the roots couldn’t breathe.  They were experiencing death by asphyxiation!!!  

     Next, came the realization that the saucer was not there for run off but for drawing up purposes.   In other words, that dish, under the flower pot, is not a saucer to catch surplus but a cup from which the plant is to drink its nourishment.  

     Finally, and of greatest importance, it comes down to roots – the part of a plant conveying water and nourishment to the rest of the plant.   A strong, healthy plant is nourished from the bottom, its roots, not fed from the top.   Top watering results in short, weak roots.  Only by stretching deep to find water, do roots grow big and sturdy.

     Can’t this also be said about humans?   For our roots to grow and support us through all seasons of life, don’t they also need to stretch deep down to find life giving water?   To stretch ourselves beyond a superficial level of life is not easy; but it is from where a healthy, happy and Holy life grows.  

        We all need to ask ourselves the following.   Are we looking to be fulfilled by a deluge of worldly food raining down on us; or are we willing to stretch ourselves through life’s dirt and be deeply rooted in the reign of the greatest root of all — the Root of Jesse, Jesus Christ?