And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. (Romans 5:4 NLT)
(This story was posted on Facebook on April 24, 2025 by “The Homeschool Historian.” I wrote the prayer.)
There’s an empty lot where a house once stood.
It had fallen into disrepair when an elderly man could no longer maintain it. Once he passed away, the house apparently was condemned and torn down. We watched them dismantle it over the course of several days, until one day, they filled in the basement with soil.
It was gone.
While it made for good, deep conversation with the kids at the time, it’s been a few years now.
We just got used to driving past the empty lot, and grass has gradually covered all evidence of the home or the family who lived there.
Or, so I thought.
Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I glanced casually at the lot when something bright caught my eye. And then something else.
Tulips.
A smattering of tulips lined a now invisible walk way, cheerfully craning their faces towards the sun, just as they had done for countless Aprils. Oblivious that their master’s house was gone, they looked lonesome and hopeful all at once.
I thought about those tulips for a long time.
I thought about the many patches of trees out in the country, clustered together around invisible homesteads.
I thought about crumbling foundations where tiny feet had once skipped, cats dozed, and newspapers were tossed.
I thought about the way towns keep changing, the old ushered out by the new, family legacies buried in local cemeteries while their homes are lived in by people who never knew them.
And I thought about the person who painstakingly planted a row of tulips which continued to grow, faithfully, year after year, even if no one sees them.
There’s an empty lot where a house once stood.
But it doesn’t feel so empty anymore.
God,
Thank you for the wonder and beauty of the life cycles you have designed. Generation after generation reveals your faithfulness. We’re grateful for reminders of your work in the past that continue to shape our present and future. Thank you for the unexpected blessings that appear even in seasons of barrenness, and for the new hope that rises from places of emptiness or devastation. Help us to recognize when you’re leading us into something new. Give us the grace to let go—even to forget—the things from the past that no longer serve us, so we can fully embrace what you’re doing now. Help us see your provision—paths through the wilderness and streams in the desert. Tune our hearts to yours, so we can recognize how you’re building in us endurance, character, and hope. We pray these in Jesus’s name, AMEN.
See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you. (Isaiah 42:9 NIV)
Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV)