Once, boys, and girls, there were two plants that looked like the two I have brought to show you. One of them, you see, is stunted, and withered, and half dead, and has no flowers. The other is fine and large, and see what beautiful blossoms it bears! Well, this is the story of these two plants.
The first of them, as soon as its head popped above the soil, began to think, “Now, I wonder what sort of blossom I shall bear? Shall I have a red rose, or a white lily, or a blue harebell, or a purple hyacinth, or a yellow tulip? Will people praise me, and shall I get into a rich vase in some rich house?”
Such thoughts the silly plant could not keep out of its head, and indeed it did not try. It paid no attention to the rain and sun and soil. It did not send out its little rootlets, as it should, to gather in the substances that would have made it strong and flourishing. It just dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed. The result was that never a blossom came, and scarcely a leaf, and the plant itself cannot live very much longer on its poor, dried-up roots.
But the beautiful plant! Why, it spent no thought on what might happen some day, but simply grew, the best it knew how. It opened up its leaves to the sun and rain. It sent its roots deep and wide through the rich, life-giving earth. And at last, one happy day, it discovered that it bore a most lovely flower. And soon came another, and then another, and another, until people came to look at it, and enjoy it, and admire it.
And now, children, which plant do you want to imitate,—the plant that kept thinking so much about what it would grow to be that it did not grow at all, or the plant that just did the best it knew how, and trusted God to send the beauty and the glory when the right time came?