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Another Poinsettia, Stress and God’s Healing 16JAN

Stress bring flowers – a last ditch effort for the plant who is struggling, stressing to do the one thing that is most important in carrying out the biological mission of reproduction  – of passing on ones genetic material…  not only do plants flower when the nourishment, timing is right for the best survival of offspring seeds.. but they also flower as the a last ditch effort – this often happens when the plant who is struggling, stressing to do the one thing that is most important in carrying out the biological mission of reproduction  – of passing on one’s genetic material…When a new tomato plant is transplanted, the gardener must pinch off the first few rounds of yellow flowers to encourage the plant to spend its energy into vegetative growth – to keep the plant growing until it is big and strong and then able to produce big juicy tomatoes…those first few yellow flowers are a stress phenomenon – while the plant is getting established, its roots damaged, it has no idea that the caring gardener will feed it, water it and nuture it…

I don’t have a green thumb but poinsettias and me seem to do well together – I have at least three rescued ones – people ask if I put them in the dark, starve them to make them flower – and no – I just keep continually caring for them…  the stress comes naturally to them (my bad green thumb) and I don’t have to force the stress…  

This past fall I dug out and brought inside a a giant poinsettia  (the big one in the top of the photo) which I had previously rescued  from being tossed out at work a year ago after its usefulness as a decoration at work was done… – I watered it and planted it outside later in the late spring and it thrived so much!  I brought in before the frost.   and damaged one section of it – but that section did recover and although the whole plant lost most of its beautiful green leaves – it has been re-growing the green leaves again over the last two months… but the only part of it that is red and flowering is the one third that I accidentally damaged in a big way when I dug it out of the ground – the roots were damaged and it had a hard time taking in water.  So, now two months later, the whole plant is doing fairly well – and only that damaged area, that I stressed by transplanting, is now growing the red beautiful leaves. The stress of the damage – the repair was new root growth to take in water… well now it is beautiful!

Does stress make us more beautiful? 
A broken person recovers and is more beautiful from the stress.
Is it God’s way to show us where we need to grow? Put some new roots down?  To stand in front of others and show our cracks and how we are healing? To reach out to other broken people? To let God use our secrets and our damages to be examples to others?

I think that when we are in need of healing – we can ask some friends to help hold up the pieces – to provide emergency nourishment… but God has to grow us new roots for life-giving water. We have to reach out to God for repair. Only then can we show our real beauty.