Tulips are my favorite, so I grabbed some at Trader Joe’s yesterday. Imagine my horror when the first thing I saw this morning was a vase full of droopy flowers. They were all completely bent down and flimsy.

I took them out of the vase and sure enough, their tips were brown and they weren’t taking in any water. When flowers are left out of water too long, they seal up. They close off and become incapable of taking water.

I think people are a little bit like that. I know, here I go spiritualizing stuff again, but work with me. Creation teaches us spiritual truth if we’re paying attention.

Sometimes life is hard, relationships are hard or we don’t get what we need to thrive. If we aren’t watered, so to speak, we close ourselves off. We seal up our hearts. Nothing can get in at all at that point.

I lived like that for a long time. It felt like nothing came in and nothing went out. I was kind of numb.

When it happens to flowers, if you catch it in time, you simply cut off what’s dead, dried and sealed up and then there can be free flow of water to the flower again. If you put them back in water they perk right up. That’s what happened with my tulips today.

It’s basically the same for us. All the dead, dry, old stuff has to be removed, or dealt with, before we can receive what we need.

The beauty of it is that Jesus said He was both the Resurrection and the Living Water. We need not fear being open-hearted. We need not thirst again or stay withered. We need not be without the things our hearts need. He can bring us back to life.

It’s kind of His thing. He is doing it in me  in ways I could not have imagined. My tulip analogy is a bit simplistic, to be sure. Some things take more time than others, but be encouraged: He’s really good at bringing life where there is none.

Just ask.