Nature’s ‘Resurrection Cure’ for the discouraged soul.

In one of the driest, rockiest places of the arid grasslands of the northern regions of South African, amongst the jagged crags, a rather nondescript but yet peculiar indigenous plant has survived the elements and carved out a niche for itself.

This obscure shrub stands as one ofnature’s most wonderful symbol of hope and endurance.
Growing where few other plants would survive, the Myrothamnus flabellifoliusis known by its common Afrikaans name as the ‘bergboegoe’ or ‘the Resurrection Plant’.
It was part of ancient folklore, that when person had suffered significant losses, like for instance, the death of a loved one, or a devastating setback or failure in life, and is in deep despair. When life’s darkest hour has struck, and all hope is gone, and life had lost its meaning.
It is said, that an object lesson taken form this seemingly insignificant member of the plant kingdom, could somehow be used as catalyst to bring a person back to life again. To ‘jump start’ and restore belief in themselves, and to recover hope for the future.
The recommendation for the downcast and discouraged soul then, is  to take a completely dried out, totally lifeless and finished, ready for the compost heap, twig of ‘bergboegoe’, and place it in a glass of water in their windowsill for a day.
Amazingly the dead ‘bergboegoe’ twig will have transformed itself into a flourishing fully alive green bough by the next day.
This plant has the uncanny ability to dry out completely, to the point where for all practical appearances it seems to be completely dead, but yet, with the slightest encouragement, in the form of water and sunlight, it revives, and makes a comeback to life. Within hours it has once again become a vibrant green plant.
The ‘Resurrection Plant’ is evidence that no matter how bleak or desperate a situation might seem, there is always hope!
For this is the very meaning and power of ‘Resurrection’ and indeed the very Nature of God!
The Apostle Paul was certainly no stranger to life’s cycle of the experience of dying and being revived again. He was familiar with contradiction and  knew all about disappointment .
“For we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about the affliction and oppressing distress which befell us in the province of Asia, how we were so utterly and unbearably weighed down and crushed that we despaired even of life itself.
Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the very sentence of death, but that was to keep us from trusting in and depending on ourselves instead of on God Who raises the dead.”
2 Corinthians 1:8 (Amplified Bible)