Succulents of Hope - iBelieve Truth: A Devotional for Women - August 31
Succulents of Hope
By Bronwyn Lea
These past few months, I decided to try my hand at creating a succulent garden. "Oh, they're so easy to grow!" friends said, and I sighed. I have not found succulents easy.
My feeble attempts at re-potting healthy-looking plants were rewarded with the leaves plummeting off the plants within a week of my handling them, even as others just turned yellow and sort of shriveled. I was deeply discouraged: was I overwatering them, or under watering them? Were they getting too much sun or too little? I didn’t know how to fix it, but I suspected they were failing, and the sallow, slumped leaves seemed to confirm this. I looked at the pile of fallen leaves lying in the potting soil and grieved. I studied the rotting ones still attached and tried to WILL them back into health… only to be discouraged when yet another one fell the following day.
Of course, it was never just about the succulents. Those little plants seemed symbolic of so much going on. I was trying so hard to make distance learning work, and while I could *see* our kids weren’t flourishing, I wasn’t sure how to fix it. Except, with children (and work, and church, and the malaise of the world), the problems are a lot more complex than getting the wrong ratio of light and water.
But God recently surprised me with hope in the most unexpected places. After weeks of watching leaves droop, drop, and start to decay and wondering whether my plants were going to make it, I realized I have been looking in the wrong place. My eyes had been focused on the old leaves falling off, but I hadn’t looked to the tips of the plant, to see if any new buds were forming. And when I looked, there they were! My efforts at readjusting had not been the failures I’d thought.
Hope sometimes doesn’t look like the old thing recovering. Dying leaves don't un-yellow and re-green themselves. Hope, as it turns out, sometimes looks like a tiny new thing sprouting. And so, when a mentor showed me Isaiah 43:18-19, God immediately brought the succulents to mind:
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up! Do you not perceive it?
I was so focused on worrying about what was being lost, and whether it could be salvaged, I was NOT perceiving the new thing. But when I started to look for buds, I realized there were tiny new nodes all over the place. And earlier this week, I clapped my hands with joy when I noticed yet another surprising new place of growth: tiny green tendrils of growth shooting from the edges of the dead leaves that had fallen!
Jesus said the same thing, but I’d forgotten: unless a kernel of wheat (or a succulent leaf!) falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds (John 12:24).
I am looking at our children, at our community, at our church with a new set of eyes. Rather than focusing on the things which have drooped and dropped, I’m asking God to help me notice the new thing he’s doing. Because he is. He is always advancing his Kingdom. He is always nurturing his children. He is doing a new thing among us: inviting us to see buds of growth, and find places of new life.
What might he be sprouting in me? And in us? What new budding opportunities are there in how God is forming us in our walk with him? Where are there opportunities for evangelism and neighborliness there weren’t before? What new ways might there be to build community we never imagined? How might his plans to reach children, youth, students, neighbors, and our city be freshly reimagined? How will God keep his promise to build his church in this season?
We are invited to keep our eyes open together: He’s the God who brings growth, and he is doing a new thing.
Bronwyn Lea is the author of Beyond Awkward Side Hugs, an editor for Propel Women ministries, and serves on the pastoral staff of her church. She lives in Northern California with her family and their struggling succulents. Connect online at her website, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
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If you've been feeling tired, overwhelmed, depleted, or just quietly wondering where God is in the middle of a very full life — this episode is for you. And honestly? It might be for me too, because I'm recording this in one of those seasons myself.
Today we're doing something a little different. Instead of going deep in a passage, we're talking about what to do when deep feels like too much — when you need less, not more. Specifically, I'm walking you through one of my favorite practices for weary seasons: handwriting scripture.
Not typing it. Not scrolling past it. Actually writing it out, slowly, in your own hand — because something happens in your brain when you do that. The words land differently. They go deeper. And over time, they become part of that personal library of God's voice that the Holy Spirit can pull from when you need it most. That's what Psalm 119:11 means when it says I have hidden your word in my heart — it's scripture moving into your long-term memory, where it lives and stays even when you haven't opened your Bible in weeks.
I'm sharing the five verses I wrote out for myself today — and why each one hit me fresh even though I've known some of them for years. This episode is part of our How to Study the Bible Podcast, a show that brings life back to reading the Bible and helps you understand even the hardest parts of Scripture. If this episode helps you know and love God more, be sure to follow the How to Study the Bible Podcast on Apple or Spotify so you never miss an episode!
