Plant Pride

I do not boast or take pride in my Christian maturity. Does a plant take pride in the rain it receives? Does it boast in the sunshine? Does it pride itself that it happened to be planted in fertile soil? Is it puffed up by the fact that it was tossed by an "all-powerful" hand, or that, by chance or providence and no act of its own, it accidentally fell away from the seed bag, or that it floated away from its parent plant, and against the odds, survived? Does it boast in its parents' and ancestors' germination and pollination? Does it hold a sense of pride that the climate was just right for its early life, and that the beaks of birds and bugs passed over it? Does it boast each day that it was neither parched nor drowned the day before, or frozen the last night? Does it pridefully make known that pests and other predators are rare in its area? Does it puff itself up that, by no power or intelligence of its own, it is a tomato plant rather than an onion, or a rose rather than a daisy? Does it stand tall and proud because an "all-powerful" hand removes the weeds, or because the weeds happen to leave it be? Is it full of itself that it has survived storms, when its survival derives from things mentioned above? Of course it does not. It rather humbly and gratefully accepts these blessings, and simply grows.

Neither will I boast or fill myself with pride over blessings that do not come from myself. Spiritual maturity can be equated to a plant's maturity: both take a lot of gifts and blessings to occur.

-- Kingdom Advancer
written: September 1st, 2006
© Copyright 2006, Kingdom Advancing