Prayer is like planting a tree – you water the soil, you wait, and sometimes…you wonder if anything is happening at all. But oh, when it blooms, it’s worth every moment of patience and trust. The devotion I listened to this morning reflected beautifully on persistence in prayer. Throughout Scripture, we see how many prayers were answered not through ease but through persistence – offered with childlike faith, trusting in our Heavenly Father’s wisdom, even when His answers don’t align with our expectations.

This ties so well with the homily we heard at yesterday’s Mass, anchored in the story of the seeds and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). From this parable, we’re reminded of the virtues of patience and trust in God’s will (along with forgiveness, of course). The weeds and the crops sometimes appear indistinguishable, their differences only revealed with time. This truth mirrors our lives. We may not yet see the fruit God is bringing forth, but time, guided by His hand, will reveal what is of Him.

Similarly, in the devotion, the writer shared a story of a tree she once planted – a jacaranda she longed to see flourish. At first, the tree appeared weak and failing, she had to convinced her family not to uproot and replace it with a different tree. Yet with time, what seemed lifeless grew into a strong and magnificent tree, now blooming beautifully with each season. It was not a failure – it was simply a matter of God’s timing.

This is what our prayer lives require: persistence, patience, and trust in the One who sees the end from the beginning. While we may struggle to understand His answers, we are still called to persist in praying, immerse ourselves in His Word, and rest in the certainty that His timing is always perfect and good. God always fulfills His promises to us.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”