Methuselah's Promise

In 2005, botanist Dr. Elaine Solowey of Israel's Arava Institute planted a seed unlike any other. Recovered from excavations at the ancient fortress of Masada — the same Masada where Jewish rebels made their last stand against Rome in 73 AD — the seed had been carbon dated to approximately 2,000 years old. By every measure of science, it should have been dead.

Six weeks after planting, a tiny green shoot broke through the soil.

The seed — a Judean date palm, a species then considered extinct — had been waiting in the dark for twenty centuries. Scientists named the plant "Methuselah." Within a few years it stood over ten feet tall, bearing pollen and eventually, with the help of a female tree, producing fruit. A lost species brought back from nothing more than a handful of ancient seeds.

Hope is like that. Sometimes the promises of God appear to lie dormant so long that we assume they have died. The dream you once carried. The prodigal child you've been praying for. The healing that hasn't arrived. The calling that seems buried under years of disappointment.