Fruit from failure
It all started with some bad housekeeping…
I had bought some sweet potatoes that somehow never made it to the table. Instead they languished in the cupboard, waiting to be used, enjoyed for the purpose for which they were grown. The days grew longer, and the sweet orange roots began to yearn for the sunshine. They put out tiny leaves, longing, as all living things do, to reproduce, bear fruit. I had missed my window of opportunity to feed my family with the vitamin A, fiber and other yumminess! I had failed.
Not willing to let one failure become two, I cut the potatoes apart between the sprouts, leaving some potato for each new vine to feed from while it developed roots of its own, stuck them in the ground near other plants that might get watered and said, “There. Grow if you’ve a mind to.”
I guess it had a mind to, because through the vicious summer, the tiny purple leaves unfurled themselves into bright green, four-inch spear-pointed sun-catchers. As the heat increased, the vines spread to cover the ugliness of the nearby compost-in-waiting with beauty and then burst into lavender and purple glory with trumpet-shaped blossoms. As I poured the spent dishwater around the plants, I prayed, “Lord, thank you for the beauty of these vines. Please let there be some potatoes under all this.”
Frost blackened the glory of summer vines. The moment of truth approached. The first turnings of the garden fork were not encouraging. I found only roots smaller than my little finger, but these were on the fringes of the growth; they had not had much time to fill out the roots they had put down… nearer the centers of the vines, they were larger, quarter- or half-dollar- sized. Now I was finding “grocery store” sized tubers, growing so tightly together I had to break them apart to get them out of the ground! A banana box full from two potatoes of failure!
God’s plan is always to restore and bless with beauty and abundance the ground which was barren in my heart and in the garden!
Merry Christmas!
Watch for a special series of posts beginning on Christmas Day!
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