Today I want to talk about a plant that has been reminding me about the Lord. My late mother had green fingers. Whatever she touched grew beautifully. Dad and I have been trying our best to do the plants she grew some good. Most of the time we are not bad.
This year just before the Chinese New Year, the plants were all very dry. Most of their leaves turned yellow and some we thought were dead. My lovely neighbour would occasionally ask about the plants because they looked dead. I almost wanted to throw all of them away if not because there were just too many to throw before the Chinese New Year and we had so little time to do that. So I left them standing. When I returned from Lanzhou, to my greatest astonishment, all of the leaves in the potted yellow plants are green.
One particular plant caught my eye. It gives off a jasmine scent when the flowers are in full bloom. It was mum's favourite pot and she loved to stand by this pot to trim and watch the flowers bloom. Now this pot is strange this year. It was all so dry and yellow. Dad wanted to throw it away but he didn't when he went and try to break the branches. He realized that it is still alive. So we let it grew in that yellow coat. Amazingly, after two weeks, we found green shoots, new ones, sprouting from the branches that are dry.
That reminds of the Lord. If we abide in Christ and He being the vine, we shall so live even though we are dead. As long as we abide in Him.
Last sunday, Pastor Ben spoke on living a Christian life that is working. He shared with us about what it is to live a Christian life that works. One morning, a pastor was preparing his sermon for sunday in a park. Some how that morning he heard a noise behind the hill he was seated at. He climbed up to see where the noise came from. He saw to his horrors that some of the men were cutting down the logs in the log cabin and then stamped on the log as if it was theirs and loaded a truck full of it. He also saw that these men were in his congregation. So what do you think he would preach that day? Well, you guessed it. He spoke on THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. He spoke right from his heart and the congregation were repenting and crying because of the sermon. Even those who stole the logs cried and said the sermon touched them so much.
The next sunday, he went to his usual thinking spot and heard the same noise again. To his dismay he saw the same group of men from his church cutting now another cabin's log for loading into the trucks. You should know what he preached. He spoke on THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THY NEIGHBOUR'S LOGS. What do you think the congregation did this time? They FIRED the pastor for the sermon he preached.
Many of us are only hearing things. We get emotional after a sermon and that is it. Our lives remained untouched by God when the week starts again. I have been watching how I moved through the week and seeking to see the Hand of God and wanting to listen to His still small voice.
It is not easy to do what God wants us to do. But I do know that when we do His will, He will bless us. So I am going to continue with the message this sunday about listening to God and living for Him.
I am not going to fire Pastor Ben because he tells the truth and tells it bluntly sometimes. That is what we need. No gentle reminder but a stark reality that we are not living for GOD. All the time, we live for ourselves but should we abide in Christ the deadness in our heart will become alive again.
