The Bamboo Tree

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Some time ago I heard the story of the Chinese bamboo tree: You take a little seed, plant it, water it, and fertilize it for a whole year, and nothing happens. The second year you water and fertilize it and nothing happens. The third year you water it and fertilize it and nothing happens. How discouraging this becomes! The fourth year you water it and fertilize it and nothing happens. This is very frustrating. The fifth year you continue to water and fertilize the seed and then sometime during the fifth year, the Chinese bamboo tree sprouts and grows NINETY feet in SIX weeks!

I am sure many of us can relate their life to that of the life of a bamboo tree, especially the first 5 years of its life.  We seem to be praying to Jesus, obeying his commandments, reading the Bible; but God’s promises do not seem to be coming through into our lives.  The God who provides, the God who heals, the God of peace, the God our righteousness, does not seem to be responding.  We seem to be waiting like the bamboo tree, all our life; there seems to be no movement from our state of misery even after 5 or 10 years.  Deliverance seems to be like a long lost dream.  It is a very discouraging experience, especially when you see other people who do not know God, prospering in their endeavors and/or not having the sufferings that you seem to be going through.  I believe there is a reason.  

I believe that God does not want to provide for us for a season; however he wants to provide for us for eternity; and for us to receive that blessing he needs to prepare us, which takes time.  This does not happen overnight.  If you break an egg before it is due to be hatched you will not get a chicken, but an egg yolk or even perhaps a dead chick.  A caterpillar too has to go through the metamorphosis stage to become a beautiful butterfly.  If we try to open the caterpillar in its pupa stage, the butterfly will be disabled for life.  It is interesting to note that God has worked out his ways of operating even in the life of plants, insects and animals.  Hopefully, we too can recognize these life processes and understand how God will operate, work wonders and pour out his love into our lives through the Holy Spirit.  

We can look at the life of Abram from the Bible who had to wait for 25 long years until God’s divine promise of a child “Isaac” would be born to him through his wife Sarah. I presume Abram must have been thrilled when he received this awesome promise.  But as the years went by he too might have started wondering; why is God delaying? Perhaps God changed his mind? Was it really God who spoke to me?  However, we know that God did keep His Word.  God did not want Abram to be just a father of a child, but was preparing him, in the 25 years, to become a father of many nations.  We see later that God changed his name to Abraham, “father of nations”.  God had to work on various aspects of Abram’s life to change him to be the true father of nations, “Abraham”!

Similarly, we all seem to be waiting for some deliverance in some area of our life.  Today I encourage you to allow God to work in your life, so that you too can be changed to be the person that God wants you to be.  Ask God where he needs to work in your life.  Then you will see how the power of God will overflow in your life and show you the aspects in your life that needs a change. The Bible tells us that we need to rejoice in our sufferings, which will produce perseverance, perseverance will produce character, and character produces hope and hope will never disappoint us.  A time will come when the bamboo tree in your life will also shoot up to Ninety feet in six weeks. 

So I encourage you all to hang in there and trust in Jesus, who is the giver of all good things in our current and future eternal life.


Romans 5: 3-5 we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  

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