The Bleeding Heart that Died--and Rose Again!

Our pastor's wife purchased a bleeding heart plant last year and planted it in her prayer garden, in a little nook surrounded by white lattice. But in the heat of summer it died. 

 

She thought it was gone forever. No sign of it that fall and winter. But this spring, the plant poked through the soil, and within a short time, it was surprising her! Already in mid-May it was blooming! 

The plant that had died resurrected, just like many hopes and dreams and relationships that might seem to be dead. 

Summer's heat of difficult circumstances, frowning providences, hard diagnoses claim the life of what we had hoped would be. The plans fall to the ground. The hopes are discarded.

 

We languish in a hospital room when we had hoped to attend a beautiful celebration. We listen to diagnoses and assume we won't live to see the grandchild or the wedding or the graduation. A relationship is on the rocks or worse. We are sure it is dead. It won't recover. 

But against the background of the black-burned trees down by the river in sight of our house here in South Dakota, where the prairie fire swept through last year, fresh new spring flowers are blooming this month. The grass and plants are so green!

The blackened scar will be there probably as long as we live. But there is resurrection of new life and hope. We can lay our hopes in the dust, but maybe, just maybe, as we simply leave it alone, hidden in the dust rather than dug up to fuss with, it will yet live and resurrect again when it is the right time.

If your bleeding heart has literally died, let it lie quietly in the dust.

In His own way and time, God will raise it up again.