Every year, I plant flowers around the house. I typically plant petunias because, let’s be real, they’re super cheap and pretty. This year, I labored and planted dozens of purple petunias, my favorite color. Within that week, however, the family of bunnies we share our property with devoured all the petunias. All that was left was a row of pathetic-looking green stumps.
After a couple weeks of hoping the bunnies would move on (they didn’t) and feeling somewhat defeated, I yanked out all the petunias and replaced them with flowers that bunnies do NOT like to eat. I’m happy to say that the bunnies have not eaten these new flowers, and although none of them are purple, they look nice.
Today, I was sitting and admiring my little flower garden, when I noticed one lone flower at the far corner—a purple flower. Apparently, one of my purple petunias survived my previous upheaval and subsequent hunts by the bunnies. This made me smile.
You could take this story and use it as a metaphor for a lot of things. But the Lord brought my attention to one in particular.
At one point in my life, I tried to have a real relationship with God. I planted a proverbial row of purple petunias and hoped for the best. But that relationship didn’t grow as I expected and eventually died (or so I thought). Thereafter, I focused my energy on other things—some of which brought me happiness, and some of which brought me great pain.
After focusing solely on other “flowers” for several years, I finally hit a bottom this past year—rock bottom. But God did not give up on me. In some distant corner of my heart, He was that single purple petunia, still there and fighting for me. And at the last possible second before I destroyed what flowers I had left, He saved me.
This time around, I’m planting purple petunias everywhere I can, and I’ll never stop.
Purple Petunia 