I discovered this small heather on a nursery discount stand of plants with broken branches or which had not been watered and were dry and withered. But I saw spark in it, took it home, watered and planted it in new ground. Having found its right place, it revived and grew.
Now in the first days of July, with white alyssum as neighbors, I see it has started to bloom with delicate white flowers. The tag that accompanies most nursery plants was missing when I bought it, but I have a feeling this little heather will change color in the fall and perhaps even eventually resemble flame!
To be sure, it needed to be watered and freed of its root-confining plastic pot, but I believe the cause of the new growth and beauty, the magic if you will, was that I saw it, acknowledged it, in the first place. There's an epidemic of alienation and loneliness in our country — like the wasted heather, we all need to hear, "Hello, I see you," "There you are." "I've noticed you." "You matter." I think Christians ought to be the world's experts in these things.
"It's not what you look at that matters but what you see." Henry David Thoreau
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector, and rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he made haste and came down and received Jesus joyfully...And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come this house..." Luke 19:1-6,9
