The Day I Planted Hope – BUSHRA NAHVI

Sitting in my room, I stared hard at the moon. Tears trickled down by my face for I felt absolutely despondent. WHY ME....? Why only me when I had tried my best....? I repeatedly asked this question to God, but found no reply. I could no longer bear the burden on my shoulders and I fell down on my knees seeking an answer to my question. “I DONT KNOW” how and when, but I had already commenced the journey to my dreamland....

I woke up the next morning, had my prayers and breakfast as usual. I had no frame of mind to do any work so I idly sat outside, looking at the magnificent Chinar near my home. Abruptly, a thought struck my mind. I ran inside the kitchen and took out a bowl in which my mother had preserved some flowering seeds. I took one of them, dug a small hole in one of the corners of my garden and carefully put it there. I sheltered it with mud and watered it. A childish thought crossed my mind; ‘If God will help my seed spring, He without doubt will help me too.’ I felt absolutely stupid at that time and thought it was too foolish of me to think like that. I smiled to myself and went inside. Every morning I would go out and have a look at my seed and water it with utmost affection. As a matter of routine, one morning I went out to look at my seed but to my surprise my seed wasn’t there anymore. It had transformed into a beautiful and fragile seedling. My seed had sprouted....! I felt colossal happiness within me and remembered the thought that had occurred to me while sowing my seed, but the difference was that now I firmly believed in what I had once thought. ‘God had helped my seed spring and God will help me too.’ I felt an unseen support, an unseen resolve. I could feel God’s presence near me even when I couldn’t see and hear Him. I could see a dawn of new hope rise on me.

I resumed the work that I had abandoned. I strived harder to achieve my goal but surely felt a difference every time. In me, I found a never dying and never ending cause of hope, belief on Almighty as well as on myself. My hope and belief never broke and I was triumphant. But never ever did I forget to water my tiny seedling which by then had become a young plant and even had a beautiful white flower, that I named “HOPE FLOWER”....!