Two Thousand Years in the Dark

In 2005, Dr. Sarah Sallon and botanist Dr. Elaine Solowey planted something remarkable at the Arava Institute in Israel — a date palm seed recovered from the ruins of Masada, nearly two thousand years old. That seed had been sitting in darkness since the time of Christ. No water. No soil. No sunlight. Just a small, hard shell carrying the blueprint of life within it.

Nobody expected it to grow. But it did. A green shoot broke through the soil, and the researchers named the seedling "Methuselah." Today it stands as a living tree, grown from the oldest seed ever successfully germinated.

Think about what was locked inside that seed for twenty centuries. Through the fall of Rome, through plagues and wars, through the rise and collapse of empires, the life in that seed never died. It simply waited.

Some of you feel like that seed today. You have been sitting in the dark for what feels like an eternity. The dream God planted in you seems impossible now. The prayer you have been praying feels unanswered. The healing has not come. The breakthrough has not arrived.

But the life is still in you. The Almighty who placed it there does not abandon what He starts. As Paul wrote, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion" (Philippians 1:6).

Your season of darkness is not the end of your story. It may be the season just before the sprouting.