The Dogwood

I sat staring at a dogwood.

It was in the monastery abbey, their Easter display, and it looked like it was suspended in mid-air.

Later I looked and it was simply wedged between a column's crease.

If you were Moses, you would probably get up to look at it.  It's not on fire but it's hanging from what looks like nothing.

As I kept looking, God reminded me that Moses was 80 years old when God called him to lead Israel.  That was relatively young back then, but it's still a long time.

Then there's Paul.  Jesus saved him on the road to Damascus, and he then trained for 3 years and spent some time in Arabia.  It was 15 YEARS before Paul started his first missionary journey.

This is encouraging for young ministers who still live at home, see really slow progress in their students' learning, and sometimes don't even really feel like they run the youth program.

Moses was 80, and Paul waited 15 years before he started doing something major.  If you feel like your ministry is at a snail's pace, just think of those guys and praise the Lord that you don't drink from a fire hose.