My wife brought home a small jasmine tree last year.  The whole family loved its beautiful green leaves and heavenly fragrances.  It spent springtime happy as can be on our kitchen windowsill.  Then in the summer it resided outdoors, thriving in the hot summer sun.  It grew and grew to two feet wide with almost a hundred sweet jasmine blossoms.

Winter came, back on the windowsill, and all its leaves dried out in the colds of January drafts.  I was worried that we may have lost our plant friend.  Hoping for a miracle, I watered it a little more day after day, month after month, anticipating the leaves getting hydrated again.  Nothing was happening.

Alas, the leaves never lived.  Still green but all dried up, the slightest touch and they let go from the branches.  Eventually I gave in, too, trimming the branches but still hoping for a miracle.  All that was left was a pitiful twig in a pot.  But I kept watering it, believing in the possibility of its continuation, although sad.

Wonders be!  Last week a few little green buds formed in the joints of the twigs!  Everyday there’s a little green shoot, then a little leaf, and now only a week or so later there are lots of little baby jasmine leaves.  Oh how sweet the sight.

I tell it every morning that I love it, and I’m so happy it’s still alive and growing.  Every morning it gives me a lesson:  hope is alive through all cycles of life.  By trimming the excess, pruning the dead, keeping the care and watering going, and believing in the possibility of spring’s resurrection, life returns anew.  Beauty lives.  There is new from old.

Our little jasmine tree’s renewal is like the many resurrections that God has given me.  I enjoy life anew each morning.  My 160 pound weight loss maintained and health restored again today. If I make the effort to turn over a new leaf, and love life, and thank God, hope lives.  Wonders be!