I first came across this beautiful sundial in Christchurch’s Botanical Gardens in December 2009. I was there on an educational trip with fellow school chaplains of our Presbyterian Schools. Though it was supposed to be an exciting time of learning and fellowshipping with fellow chaplains, I was not in the right frame of mind then. Unknown to my friends, I was going through a season of spiritual dryness.
On our last day of our trip, I woke up early and decided to take a walk in the garden. I whispered a prayer to God as I made my way there, “God, I want to encounter you once more. I am not sure how, but please refresh my weary soul today!”
As I slowly walked in the garden, I began to experience God’s presence around me – in the trees, the flowers, the green patches of grass, the blue sunny skies, the sounds of the birds singing and the fresh morning air.
I found a seat among the trees and sat there and just soaked in all that was around me. I poured out my heart—my distance from God, my sense of hypocrisy, my sins, my tears, and the deep exhaustion from serving. I admitted how tired I felt—tired of ministry, tired of pretending to be strong, tired of feeling far from God.
I told Him I was very tired – tired of serving, tired of everything! And I wished I didn’t have to feel this way. I had thought being a Christian would mean being joyful, being strong and yet here I was struggling …
After a short while, I looked up and noticed the stone structure in front of me. I went to take a look and there it was – this old looking sundial!
It had four brass inscribed plates around its outer edge, which read: “The desert: shall rejoice: and blossom: as the rose.”
When I first read it, the words stirred something in me. They sounded familiar, as though I have come across them before.
My phone wasn’t ‘smart’ then so I wasn’t able to google anything. Yet, I remembered clearly that I was strangely encouraged by those words.
A desert meant dryness—parched, barren, and lifeless… except perhaps for a few hardy plants like the cactus.
Yet, here it says the desert will rejoice and bloom like a rose. But what could make that happen? How can anything – let alone a rose – grow in a desert? It seems impossible for anything to survive there.
I kept my thoughts and questions in my heart and took down the words in my notebook.
When I returned to my friends, we were about to have our morning devotion. I shared with them my experience in the garden and the text I read on the sundial.
And one of them excitedly said, “It sounds like it’s from Isaiah 35!” We turned our Bibles to the passage and read it together.
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus …” Isaiah 35:1
I shared with them what had brought me to the garden that morning. I told them I was exhausted, worn thin, and felt as if I had nothing more to give in my service to the Lord.
To my surprise, my friends began sharing, one after another, that they were walking through the same kind of weariness – a season where their spirits felt parched and desolate, like a desert long without rain.
In that moment, I realized we were all walking through the same barren season — each of us carrying a quiet dryness we had not voiced. And as we shared our weariness, Isaiah 35:1 took on new meaning: even deserts like ours are not beyond God’s promise to make them blossom.
For some of us, this past year or season has carried a sense of spiritual dryness, a subtle drought that gradually finds its way into our hearts. Everything we do seems to hit a wall. We struggle with praying, reading God’s Word, and we find it difficult to worship and be thankful to God.
Isaiah 35:1 invites our parched souls to God’s streams of living water: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom …”
This verse acknowledges the reality of our deserts — barren places of spiritual stillness — yet offers a promise of transformation. God can bring forth renewal and hope.
Isaiah’s promise reminds us that the passing of Christmas is not the fading of joy but an invitation to hope. The God who came quietly into a manger still enters our quiet, weary places today.
The words in Matthew 1:23 reminds us that we are not alone –
23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us)
The Lord is with us through all our seasons in life – including the seasons in the deserts.
Perhaps today your heart feels like a desert – worn out, tired, or uncertain. But Isaiah assures us that we can still rejoice because God brings life into places we thought were dry and barren.
I was contemplating on what to write as I end the year 2025 and I am not afraid to share that I am feeling tired – physically and spiritually. And right away the memories of that morning in Christchurch Botanical Gardens came to mind and I longed again for the Lord’s refreshment!
I googled for more information on the sundial and was sad to read that it was vandalised in 2022.[1] Though vandals have made off with the sundial, the words: “The desert: shall rejoice: and blossom: as the rose.” inscribed on the sides remained.
Which reminded me of another verse in Isaiah 40:8 which says,
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Reading Isaiah 35:1 once more and remembering my time in the garden with the Lord has lifted me. Indeed, God’s Word and His promises never fade—they stand forever!
As 2025 comes to an end, I know many of us feel the weight of weariness in our own ways. Yet we can bring our tired souls to our Father and find rest in Him once more.
And as we step into 2026, may His living waters fill the dry places within us, and may He give us eyes to behold the roses He is growing even in the desert plains of our lives.
“We, too, become tired, deadly tired, of ourselves, of others, of the world, of life, of everything! Then it is blessed to know of a place where we can lay our tired head and heart, our heavenly Father’s arms, and say to him, “I can do no more. And I have nothing to tell you. May I lie here a while and rest? Everything will soon be well again if I can only rest in your arms a while.”
Prayer by O. Hallesby
1: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/127857598/vandals-damage-sundial-at-christchurch-botanic-gardens
