Dead Stump

 

I do not have a green thumb.  I actually may have a brown thumb, because I can’t get anything to grow.  My son-in-law and his brothers own greenhouses, and I whine to Alex, “Everything that you give me I kill.  I just can’t seem to make them grow.”  To which Alex replies, “That’s what we count on.  We want to sell more plants next year.”  Good business plan, Alex.  But I have a shrub crowding my handrail in front of my house that I just can’t kill.  It keeps growing in the way of people who come to visit us.  So, five years ago, I totally whacked it down.  I cut it back to the ground, planning to plant a smaller bush the following spring.  But, in the spring, what I thought was a dead stump, sprang back to life once again.  And since it was small, I left it alone.  But five years later, it has grown back and is crowding my handrail once again.  Hey, Job spoke of a stump just like my stump.  He said in Job 14:7-10, “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, ... 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. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?”  The stump wasn’t dead; it just looked dead.  But a man who dies is completely dead.  But not really.  Because a man’s soul lives on forever and will someday be reunited with his resurrected body.  Think about it: you will live forever.  The question is where?  In heaven or … not?