Late Larkspur

For Christmas this year, a sweet friend gifted me with an introduction to a flower farm in the state of Washington.  Embarking on a new venture, I am attempting to grow eight varieties of heirloom strains. 
To date, I have planted apricot stock, Victorian larkspur, blush sweet peas and sherbet poppies.  The recycled cardboard wombs are lined along my bedroom wall (which boasts the largest window with appropriate sun exposure). 
Every morning and evening I anxiously check for signs of dryness or, conversely, saturation leading unto mold.  I turn the beds one-quarter of a turn every day in order to strengthen the stems.  Carefully brushing my hand across the tops of the little sprouts was suggested in a how-to video I watched, encouraging a robust nature in the plants.
I am religiously compliant.
As with anything that grows, spiritual applications abound.  However, the one that boosted my flagging steps this morning was nestled within the larkspur batch.
For two weeks, three of the soil-filled plots revealed only soil on my sunrise and sunset examinations.  I watered them with the rest of the batch, but had recently begun to question the expenditure of resources, both water and time.  Still, I ran the white pitcher slowly down every row, pausing to let each small hollow fill.  But it seemed so futile in those parched, empty little two inch squares...

Today, a sprout emerged. 
It was running late, to be sure, but as solidly green and alive as anything I could hope to see.  I rocked back on my heels, watering vessel raised aloft, and just stared.

I had believed that water was being provided to the seed I knew I had planted, but I had stopped thinking the seed would actually produce life. 
Like my belief in the goodness of God, and the confidence that His promises are true, going through the motions had become the testimony of my faith, without a corresponding expectation in my heart.

Hope hurts.  It is painful to wait.
The Israelites were exiled forty years in the wilderness before they gained the promised home of Canaan.  But they were brought, at last, to a land flowing with milk and honey.
I tended the remaining vacant lots with renewed excitement.  It was an amazing prelude to a bountiful Sunday that focused on repentance and the abundance of the gospel -- on the Lord and Giver of life.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.