I will never know for certain what is growing in the black plastic container on my window sill.

For Christmas of 2019, my Dad gave me a packet of money tree seeds which he had received in his gift bag from a financial conference. According to legend, money trees bring financial prosperity to their owner. Once the branches of a money tree are long enough, they are often braided together. With time, the rest of the tree grows from a single, interwoven trunk. Sounds promising, yes?

In the early days of 2020 I promptly planted one of the seeds from the packet, little guessing how much house plants would be part of how I mentally survived the pandemic. Over the next few months, I watched it grow at a rapid, magical-beanstalk-ish pace and grew excited to braid those branches whenever they were long enough.

Well.  

I have no idea what flourishing monstrosity is growing in my black plastic pot on the window sill, but it is most assuredly not a money plant. I have researched what money trees are supposed to look like, and this is not that. Although my initial reaction was “I’ve been cheated of my fortune!”, I now have a unique fondness for this plant precisely because I do not know what it is. Despite multiple location and container changes, it persists in growing chaotically outward and upward. According to no clear seasonal scheme I can detect, small white flowers occasionally blossom around its leaves. I honestly suspect that the flowers grow when the plant is happy, like a herbaceous mood ring. Who can know the mind of a plant?

But I digress.

The point is, this mystery plant has become a metaphor for how I see my life. There are days in which I feel happy and confident in the work I am doing; I can see the flowers that are blossoming in my life, and it is enough. But there are other days—many days, in fact—in which I have no idea where I am going or what fruit my work is growing. On those days, my mystery plant speaks the grace of God to me as it asks me better questions than the “what, where, and how’s” that fill my mind and rob me of peace.

The better questions are these:

Is my life still be beautiful, even if I do not know where it is going?

Can it be well with me to simply appreciate the growth that is, even if I cannot see or discern the fruit of it yet?

Can I, like this plant, flourish amid uncertainty?

When I turn to scripture, I find these very questions echoed in the prayers of David. David wrote Psalm 52 while reflecting on a time in his life that felt terrifying and uncertain—a time when he was fleeing for his life from the wrath of the jealous King Saul. He didn’t necessarily have a plan for where he was going; he just knew he had to run. On the occasion of Psalm 52, David had taken refuge in the temple of Priest Ahimelech, who fed David and his men with sacred bread from the tabernacle.

After verbally shaking his fist at those who boast in their own strength and flaunt their crimes regardless of God’s justice (aka Saul), David concludes,

But I am like an olive tree, thriving in the house of God.
I will always trust in God’s unfailing love.
I will praise you forever, O God, for what you have done.
I will trust in your good name in the presence of your faithful people.

(Psalm 52:8-9) 

No matter where he goes or what becomes of him, David is content to be a tree planted in the household of God because he trusts in God’s unfailing love.

Although we do not know for certain who wrote Psalm 92, this Psalm is also written from the contented perspective of one who thrives in the household of God despite the presence of chaotic evil in his life: 

The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.
They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

(Psalm 92:12-15)

The Psalmists conclude that it is enough simply to flourish as God’s house plant, no matter what chaos or uncertainty surrounds them.

Will we also trust that the attentive gardener is at work in our lives, even when we cannot yet see what we are becoming—even if it appears that nothing is growing?

It would be easy enough to discover online what my mystery plant is. But you know what? I’m content not to know; because for now, it is enough to simply watch it grow.

May the same be true of our lives.

A prayer for the uncertain season:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

--Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude