Sometimes it just takes time

A year or two ago I went to a plant sale and bought an iris to plant by my house. If there is any plant that I truly love (next to tulips and daffodils) it would be the iris. I've always admired homes that have great bunches of them blooming in shady patches, slender stalks stretched tall with velvet crowns.

Well, the iris did not grow the first year. It did not grow the second year. (Or possibly I am imagining that two years have passed, time has pretty much ceased to have any meaning for me.) So I was quite shocked this past weekend when I noticed it had shot up and was getting ready to bloom. I now have two beautiful blossoms as reminders that sometimes things grow when you have given up all hope that they will ever bear fruit.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11 (ESV)