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Enjoy Life, Enjoy God


Dale Patterson

DEAD PLANTS

September 28, 2010

Every spring in our bushes in front of our home, we have a dead plant that I want to tear up. My wife argues, "It's not dead. It will come back." "No," I protest, "It's dead as a doornail." And every summer I'm wrong. Up from the dead springs a thriving plant to decorate our landscape.

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A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from this root a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him--the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord--and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

-Isaiah 11:1-3 TNIV

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Death was not the last word; not after all. Isaiah saw a dead plant in his front yard too. But he saw with the something like the eyes of God, and he also saw new life springing forth from something to him that looked dead as a doornail.

That shoot that Isaiah foresaw, we understand to be none of than Jesus, the Christ. I don't know today, if you see death around you or triumphant life. But I invite you to consider the life that rises up from the shoot, the stump of Jesse. Death, defeat, does not have the last word.

Joyfully,

Dale Patterson