Summertime is here, so I've taken up gardening. Old hat to many of you, but it's new to me. So a few weeks ago, when a friend told me nasturtium seeds would be easy – a gardener's instant gratification she promised – I decided to start there. I bought nasturtium seeds and potting soil and planted some in a peat pot the size of a small votive candle. I checked a reference book I'd bought and read up on how much water and sunlight the nasturtiums needed. Each day afterwards, I checked for sprouts. After about a week or ten days of this routine, I still had nothing but a cup of dirt.

I decided to move them outside. Maybe more sun would help. Maybe natural rain water would do them good. As you remember, they got a lot of natural rain water. So much so that I suspected the seeds had rotted from the moisture. It had been two weeks and no green to be seen. I wondered if I should toss them out and start over. And then the next morning I walked past and noticed sprouts, not just sprouts beginning to push out of the soil, but sprouts three and four inches high. I laughed out loud. I showed my husband. I'd awoken and found my lost cause full of nasturtiums and the promise of flowers. So it is with the Kingdom of God, Jesus tell us.