Thrive.
I LOVE flowers and plants. Every spring I spend way too much money on flowers for my window boxes, ferns for my porch (I mean you can't have a proper southern front porch without the crowning queen, the Boston fern), red geraniums for my porch, hostas for the shady areas, and roses and clematis for the trellises … see I spend way too much. But I'm a huge believer in perennials. They just keep coming back.
In my years as an amateur horticulturist I've observed one thing to be true, no matter the season. If a plant is planted in the perfect spot for its particular cellular make up, it will thrive. If not, it will rarely bloom and the blooms that it might be able to produce are pitiful.
Take for instance the two pots of candy tuft I purchased this spring. One, I sat on my front porch and the other I sat on the upstairs deck. The porch plant never gets direct sunlight, but gets a nice shady existence, with plenty of water. The deck one receives full on afternoon and evening sun. Guess which one is thriving? You guessed it. The one that gets the most sun. It blooms as if it's in a race. There are so many blooms I question if I fertilized it and forgot… not that I would ever do that. ;) If a plant could be on steroids, deck flower is on it. I'd definitely describe it as buff! Never has it not had a myriad of purple, white and red blooms adorning it's delicate stems.
Not so with porch plant! Porch plant bloomed beautifully at first, but once the blooms died off all that was left was the foliage, the leafy green goodness that is required for it to sustain life. No more, no less. I continued watering it and a few weeks later a few flowers bloomed again, but nothing like deck plant.
Now, just the opposite it true of the ferns I've placed on both the front porch and the upstairs deck. As most of you know, ferns are a shade plant and their delicate leaves can't handle direct sunlight in the heat of the day. Porch fern is ginormous and lush and oh, so green! Not so for deck fern. It's doing "OK", or I'd move it all together, but it's backside, the side facing the sun, has some brown spots where it's had too much exposure to the heat.
I'm sure you see where I'm going with all of this. Like those plants, we Christians are just the same! If we are planted where the Lord wants us, then growth will come. We may have to endure the constant heat of the ”son” or the shadows of the valley, but never fear. He knows just the spiritual "nutrients" we growing Christians need to prosper us and grow us up in Him.
But maybe you look around at your life and you don't see much growth. Maybe you're blooms perk up every now and again but mainly it's the life sustaining foliage is all your able to produce. If this is the case I encourage you to look around you and see if you're truly where God wants you to be... more spiritually, but physically can be the case as well. Are you spending more time in the shadows of self doubt, self pride…. or just plain self? Or maybe God is working on you in a special way and for a time, you're suppose to be in the shadows, but you long to be in the spot light, long to be used, but God is saying wait. Then I encourage you to be patient. The Lord knows what He's doing. He know exactly how much shade you need to bring about a lush testimony in your life.
Whether on the sunny mountain top, or the shady valley below, keep growing as you read God's Word, Keep blooming as you tell others of what He's done for you, and no matter where He plants you....thrive, Baby, thrive!
