C is for CUCUMBER

OK I know this isn't much to gripe about but after all the effort, I'm left with just one cucumber. Four months of sowing seed, waiting, watering, transplanting, more waiting, more watering, more transplanting, even more waiting and watering, reading all the gardening guides online, following instructions to the last letter, watching those little yellow flowers form and eventually disappear, leaving behind what looks like a mini fruit and then finding that a month later that mini fruit is still just a mini fruit. And it happened again and again to almost every flower on every plant. By the end I had about a dozen plants, winding their way up bamboo canes, all looking perfectly healthy and green, flowering abundantly and it looked like I was in for a bumper harvest. But it never came. Too often the expected cucumber just became shrivelled and died. I read somewhere that maybe it was a pollination problem, that perhaps the pollen had been washed away during watering but I was never really sure. Anyway I kept tending the plants but they kept failing to produce. Except for one. And it made me so proud. Partly because I had managed to grow a cucumber against all the odds but partly because that one plant had delivered. I don't really think I made much difference in the end, but at least I didn't give up.

And then I thought about that parable Jesus told about the shepherd leaving ninety nine sheep all alone to go and search for the one that had got lost and how much he had rejoiced when he found it and brought it home. And I suddenly realised that my rejoicing over one cucmber growing is nothing compared to the joy that fills our Lord when He finds one soul that is lost and brings them home. I'm so glad He doesn't give up on us.