Who knew?

When it was dry a couple days ago, I plunged into the jungle between the driveway and house. The dandelions shouted out that the whole border was full of weeds and so I donned my garden gloves and waded in.

I wasn’t really prepared for what I would find. While most of the bushes overhung the usual collection of unwanted plant life – ground elder, dandelions, buttercups, willow herb, other unknowns – one of the bushes just outside my prayer window was sheltering three fairly well-established gooseberry bushes, one sycamore tree and a wild rose bush. Who would have known?! 

I’ve got the gooseberry bushes heeled in, waiting for someplace to be planted. I don’t really like gooseberries very much but I can’t bear to just let them wither and die. They’ve struggled to get as big as they are.

We don’t always see what’s growing in the shelter of people we know. Even people we know well and love. We don’t appreciate the fruit they are nurturing in others, whose day has not yet come and who have not yet been transplanted into the sunshine. 

We need to be gentle with each other, and look for the fruitfulness they are nurturing in others.