One night as I went to sleep, I was thinking about the members of a discussion
group that met at our church. They all seemed to have grown spiritually
during the past year, but some more than others. I fell asleep wondering
what I could do to help those who were not progressing as fast as the rest.
I had a dream.
In the dream I saw a green field--like a lawn--with a planter in the middle
of it. The planter was a small plot of tilled earth surrounded by a border
of bricks set up on their corners. Then I saw a series of pictures above
the planter, like slides flashed on a screen, of various kinds of house-plants,
alternating with pictures of people's faces. It took me awhile to figure
that out, but finally I said, "Okay, plants are like people ... or
people are like plants."
The slide show stopped immediately. It was replaced by a film clip, like
a time-lapse motion picture, of two plants growing together, side by side,
in the planter. They looked like the young shoots of cannas or corn.
As I watched, the plant on the right grew much faster than the one on the
left. Soon it became two, three, four, five, six times as tall as its neighbor.
I thought to myself, "I wonder what's wrong with the little one ..."
and as the scene continued, I became more and more concerned about that
poor little plant. I thought about making sure it had enough water, and
adding some fertilizer, and loosening the dirt around it. I wondered if
a cutworm had eaten its roots.
Just then, both plants blossomed.
The one on the right was a sunflower ... and the one on the left was a perfectly
beautiful tulip.
Later, when I remembered that I had gone to sleep thinking about the members
of the discussion group, I got the message.