Dormant

I planted some grapes and was warned

That they look dead but are merely dormant.

Sure enough, beneath that appearance,

I nicked a vine with my jackknife and saw green inside.

But the right combination of sun, rain, and warm soil

And it will spring to life, send out shoots, and eventually yield fat juicy grapes.

We may drink their wine for many years to come!

It would have been easy to declare the vines dead.

By all appearances, they were gone.

What a waste that would have been.

There have been dormant times in my life and yours

Things seem dead, inert, even sterile,

Completely devoid of any growth.

In those times of anxiety and fear

I had to reach deep inside myself to find that speck of green.

It seems that nothing will bear fruit,

And that one is at a dead end.

Others may have decided you were finished and done,

But you weren't.

It appears so to them,

But you know that there is still that green alive in you.

With the right combination of hope, faith, and the warm soil of the heart

You too will sprout and reach out your branches.

You have no idea of the fruit you will bear.

You have no idea of what fine things will come with the years.

Learn that the magic that dormancy is not death,

But the staging for magnificent things.

We learn the mystery of seasons in our life,

And the hope arising that seasons change.

None of the seasons last,

But we can.