Wild Vine Climbing

There are these annoying wild vines that climb up and around every plant on our property.  They wrap themselves around, so that pulling them out is really impossible.  To pull out the twisty vine would mean you have to pull out whatever beloved plant it has wrapped itself around, which might be a rose bush, or a hydrangea or a hasta.    We have always found them to be unwanted pests.

I sat in the sun room one day and noticed some white blossoms at the very top of our large, old, tall lilac bush/tree in the back yard.   Lilac trees bloom in the early spring, so I was very confused about what I was seeing in the late summer.   It is a very tall bush.  By looking carefully,  I was able to tell that the white flowers came from twisty vines.  Gerry was able to identify them as wild morning glories.

After seeing them, and learning that,  I gained a really high level of respect for the wild morning glory, and its tenacity and determination.   I had never seen it flower before,  probably because it had not gotten high enough.   I so very much admire that plant's ability to find its way to the top, where it could become what it was supposed to be, a lovely morning glory.  There is a massive amount of intricately woven vines on the inside of the lilac,  the supportive base perhaps, the foundation.

Yesterday, I preached a sermon about the wheat and the weeds, and how there is a particular weed that grows which looks just like wheat.  You cannot tell the difference until it matures.   The weed can hide its true identity for a while, but eventually the true nature will be revealed.  You cannot sort out the wheat and the weeds until the harvest.

I feel like there is a similar kind of related lesson woven into the climbing morning glory.  The true nature of that annoying vine was not revealed until it reached the very top of the tree.!  What the plant was intended to be was finally revealed.

And of course, that is true of people too.   We can be annoying twisting pests sometimes, popping up in all the wrong places..   But when we find our way, our true selves,  what glory there is in all of that!   

The morning glory could not have made it without the support of the lilac.   It never could have bloomed.

Most of us could not have made it without the support of something, someone, somewhere along the way.  

 Friends, family, God, church, spouse, neighbors, love.