As I walked around the yard, “surveying the estate,” I wandered over to check out the crape myrtle bushes. I have four crape myrtles, three dark pink ones and one lilac one. I thought I bought four alike, but the first year they bloomed I was surprised. Crape myrtles bloom in the heat of the summer when so many plants in Oklahoma have faded and even died.
I first began to notice crape myrtle when I was driving all over the state, working on a traveling crew for the phone company. As I drove along the highways during the drought of August, I began to see beautiful blooming bushes, some almost the size of a small tree, and casually wondered what in the world was blooming that time of year.
One day when I was home, as I drove down my home street, past the house where one of my former co-workers had lived, I saw that same bush and called to see what it was named. Crape myrtle. If I’d heard of it before, I don’t remember it, but I decided that I would plant one when I found a place to buy it. The next spring, when I was shopping for annuals, I found crape myrtle plants and choose those four bushes.
While I was checking out my bushes this week, I saw buds, big fat flower buds, almost ready to open now, in November. Those buds will probably never open up to flower, because it will probably freeze tonight.
Jesus told a parable about a man planting seed, comparing it to the word of God being planted in the ground of a person’s heart. He told of a person who has a heart where the word of God was planted, and Jesus said, “They are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit.” Mark 4:18-20 NKJV.
I don’t want the cares of life, desire for things, and for riches to choke out the good word of God. I want my heart to be good soil, to hear, receive and accept, and grow the fruit that the Word of God produces. I want the buds in my heart to open to full bloom.