Evidence

“We’re already starting to lose it,” my husband remarked in reference to the beautiful fern his mom had given me for Mother’s Day. He pointed out a couple of fronds as evidence.

I disagreed and responded that I thought these fronds were actually new growth. To which he questioned, “Those brown, dead-looking ones?”

Yep, those were the ones. I explained how I might have come to the same conclusion as my husband, given their appearance, if not for one thing.

These fronds had already caught my eye when we brought the fern home. At that time, they were almost completely bare, looking stripped even. I thought then that they were already gone.

But looking at them now, they were no longer bare. They had started to fill in. Even though brownish in color, there was definitely growth that wasn’t there before.

A day or two after the conversation with my husband, I took the picture featured above, as I noticed more fullness and some of the brown color starting to change to green. I thought again of the conversation my husband and I had … and how sometimes, what appears dead is actually the beginning of new life. How sometimes, we just need a different perspective.

In this case, I knew something that my husband didn’t know, which was what allowed me to have a different perspective. To see something different unfolding. To see a bigger picture.

It’s the same way with God. He has a bigger picture view of our lives. And sometimes, when our lives seem stripped bare, it’s really just the beginning of new life.

Those stripped and barren places in our lives have not escaped God’s attention. He has His eye on them. He sees the new life that can come from them. And if we incline ourselves to God’s perspective, He can show us a different picture unfolding. 

The fronds on our fern have filled in even more now. They are no longer brown. They are green and full.

So it can be with the things of our lives. If yielded to God, with patience and time, what we once thought dead, we may come to see alive and thriving in full color.

And what we once thought as evidence of loss, we may come to find as evidence of the goodness of God.

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“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭(NIV‬‬)