I rose early on the fourth of July to visit the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.  I was a little excited about being in those beautiful gardens so early in the morning.  The words of the old song, “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses” . . . kept coming to my mind.  I love it when my expectations are exceeded, and that is exactly what happened on this perfect morning.

        But, before I could reach the gardens I had to make a pit stop for some gas.  While I was filling the tank I noticed a restaurant across the street, so I walked across for a biscuit.  Between the gas station and the restaurant I discovered this gorgeous cactus growing among the weeds that surrounded it.  Normally when faced with the decision of stopping or continuing after my quest for breakfast, the cactus would lose, but not today.  I ran back to the car, pulled my camera out and this photo is the result.  (Don’t worry, I still managed to acquire the before mentioned biscuit . . . a man can not live by cactus alone).

        After I returned home and began examining the photos from my adventure I was shocked to find that this was my favorite.  You would have thought that my best photo would have been of a plant that grew among the vast pampered garden, not a ditch by the side of the road.  As I look at this photo my heart is encouraged.  I realized that success is not dependant on how privileged we are or how many advantages we have going for us.  Our circumstances do not determine whether we succeed or fail in life.

        You may feel more like this lowly cactus surrounded by the weeds and growing in a ditch than some exotic plant thriving in a tropical paradise.  But let me tell you something; you are something special.  You have been endowed by your Creator with tremendous potential.  Many of us are like uncut diamonds, valuable beyond measure, full of shining qualities hidden beneath a rough exterior.  Today, choose to blossom and to thrive where you are planted and to look for and to bring out the best in those around you.

Something to think about:

• The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of our Creator, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world’s greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little beside ourselves.

• Living each day as if it were our only day makes for a total life lived at full potential.

• A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

• Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely content with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is still, in spite of all, the child of the Creator.

• Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

• If you treat a person as he is, he will stay as he is; but if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

• The Creator holds us responsible, not for what we have, but for what we could have; not for what we are, but for what we might be.

• Where man sees but withered leaves, our Lord sees sweet flowers growing.

• There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.

Dedicated to those who loved me out of the ditch
Rickey Moore