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I was drawn to a bunch of brown branches sticking out from the bins of fresh flowers at the grocery store. The tag read “Blooming Branches” although they looked more like a bunch of twigs. When I picked them up, I found tiny buds covering each stem. Curiosity caused me to spend $8.99 on the bundle of hope.

The branches sat in a pitcher of water for a couple of days before a few pink flowers appeared. I was shocked and so pleasantly surprised.

Today, a week later, the branches are covered in pink flowers that have blossomed from the tiny buds. It even smells good!

The branches went from looking dried up and dead to alive and beautiful. The life inside those branches just needed the right location and a little water to come forth and display their beauty.

I’m taking a lesson from this. Nothing and no one are the sum of what I see on the outside. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, where there is life, there is hope. As Ecclesiastes 9:4 reads, “But anyone still alive has hope.”

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up,” Galatians 6:9.

Let’s keep praying those prayers for others and ourselves and striving – always – to bring to the surface those dreams a lot of us have kept hidden. Never give up.

Ronny Michel can be reached at rmichel@rtconline.com