I recently had the privilege to go the Karoo.
We arrived in a small town which instantly took me to a different era, almost as if I had climbed into a time capsule and landed somewhere back in history. Life as I knew it, was not the life these people lived.

I couldn’t help but wonder what this little town was like when it was first discovered. The hustle and bustle of building a town and community, but now, it was like a ghost town of a forma existence.

Walking through the town I could almost feel the memories of years gone by and all the history this little town had held onto. During my exploration, I noticed the ground was not like the ground I know. Rather it was dry and hard, almost like a land cursed by an unspoken past, as well as a cruelty of weather and time.

Walking further, to the outskirts of the town, there was a dried up dam. I couldn’t help but notice how dry and cracked up the earth was. Sadness overcame me with a deep longing to ask God to release some much needed rain, to bring life back into this dry cracked soil.

A strange beauty started whispering to my soul, tugging at my eyes to see beyond this dry landscape and seek out the wonder.

Standing in the dried up dam…

The tiniest little plant caught my attention. It was soo small I nearly missed it! A speck of green in a brown parched soil, I stood in amazement.

It gave such beauty, transforming the cruel dehydrated terrain into a new landscape. Gently urging the eye to take a kinder, softer look and seek the beauty from within.

Looking down I noticed more beautiful little flowers sprouting up here and there, out of this hardness and drought. Amazed I started to notice there were many different little flowers. Not big and in your face, demanding to be seen, no, tiny and just simply there.

The precise intricate detail in each tiny little plant, had me in Awe!

Even more astonishing to me was that in this dry cracked soil, these plants just somehow grew. No water had been given, no drop of rain to encourage growth, but yet it grew! In what should be an impossible condition for life, here it was!

Confusion gripped my mind, as logic says there should be no life in this ground, yet there it was! Just being what it knew how to be, a plant. Softening the almost cruel, unforgivingly hard landscape.

So this got me thinking.

What journey did this little plant have to go through to get to this point? Can you imagine, the darkness all around it, no one beside it to encourage and motivate it?

I’m sure it must have felt like quitting, many times. Or did it? Maybe quitting was just not an option? Or was this little plant’s purpose, brining beauty, enough to keep it pushing through the unbearable and into the sun? Finding a way, where no way seemed imaginable?

What if it had dried up and died, there would be no fascinating beauty here.

Think about it,

If this little plant could fight its way through the intolerable drought and unforgiving land, to take its place in the sun. And with that, bring life to this land, then perhaps so too, could we.

You see, many times we are in places of severe drought, our lives feeling like the hard, cruel, cracked unforgiving land and we feel pressed into a mere existence, a survival of sorts. During these times we so busy just trying to scrape through and keep on going that we don’t reach the potential we have.

My mind wanders to what we have faced this year, the craziness of Covid, the hardships, the new way of living and the constant adapting. Facing the looming fear of the unknown. The depression of this new way of living. The sadness of so many, in crippling circumstances.

The struggle of trying to find hope and keeping my head up, while secretly feeling the despair of just wanting to give it all up. Taking one day at a time and clinging to thought that ‘this too shall pass’.

Some days, honestly speaking, I feel like that dried up dam I saw in the Karoo.

Suddenly a thought hits me!

There should be no way for that little plant to be there, but yet, there it was! Somehow it kept growing, so maybe we too can grow regardless of the world around us.

We too can keep pushing through, taking one day at a time, not giving up. Realising that we can get through this and bring beauty to a dry, cruel, almost unforgivingly hard existence.

When life pushes you down, threating to drown you in despair, just keep growing. Don’t give up, take each day, step by step. Be kind to yourself, believe in yourself, even if no one else offers support. Be gentler to those around you, bring hope by simply being you!

This time is only temporary and soon the rain will come, the dam will fill again and the landscape will completely change. So too will our lives.

Take the time to seek out the beauty even in the hard land. Look around you, find the Wonder. See the miracle of love in an unforgiving time and reach out and be a flicker of hope to someone else.

Most importantly, bring a soft splendour to this strange, cracked up, messy time we find ourselves in.

In closing remember this,

We are all in this together, and just as those little flowers can survive in the unbearable, drought stricken soil, so too can we.

My wish for you, please press play 😉

Here are some more photos of those amazing little flowers, may they bring you inspiration.