After many years of drought in California’s Mojave Desert, plant life and desert wildflowers were thought to be incapable of survival until one season the rains came and refreshed the dry ground. The stream of cars driving out to the desert to see the fresh blooms stretched for miles. These seeds lie dormant in the soil, sometimes for years, until a balanced combination of moisture and temperature triggers their development.
In like fashion, the warmth of God’s love and the inspiration of His word create the proper balance to trigger our spiritual development. This natural growth may at times have lain dormant, or at other times struggled to escape from the world’s pressures and toils through human methods, later to blossom from the presence of inspiration. In Job 14:7–9 we read: “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.” Also in Job is God’s question to us: Who satisfies “the desolate and waste ground; and [causes] the bud of the tender herb to spring forth?” (Job 38:27).
Logic dictates that where there is even “the scent of water,” there must be water. Accordingly, where there is even the glimpse of spiritual inspiration, there must be Spirit. Accompanying inspiration comes an awakening to a higher sense of purpose. It is referred to in the Bible as the “still small voice” (I Kings 19:12). The still dormant and unrealized potential of the smallest of experiences, when partnered with inspiration, can bud and blossom into something wonderful.
