Next to our house is a daylily farm. They are blooming right now in all their incredible diversity and color. Daylilies are tall, beautiful, large flowers that grow from a clump of what looks like large-bladed grass. They only bloom for a few weeks each year but when they do, it’s breathtaking! I’ve learned something interesting about daylilies that I think points to a truth that might help many of us: they are most beautiful, for the longest, when you leave them attached to the plant.
This may seem ridiculously obvious, but let me elaborate. There are a lot of flowers which, when cut, make wonderful bouquets and last for many days in a vase. Not daylilies. They begin wilting very quickly when you cut them. I walked by one growing in our yard the other day and it hit me like a wave of truth: this is us.
How often do we think that what we want is to be plucked up and placed in some beautiful place where we’ll make people happy and be on display in all our glorious beauty? Ok so maybe that’s a little bit of a stretch – but we do very often long for a new place, a new situation, a different circumstance. It usually sounds like, “if only I can [blank]…then I’ll be [insert the state of being you’re longing for here.]”
The truth is, we’re planted in a specific place, connected to a specific source and meant to bloom at a specific time. I’m not suggesting we should be terrible most of the time then great for a short while. No, I’m suggesting we should take the pressure off ourselves to bloom year-round and be dazzling all the time. It’s ok to be fully in bloom during our seasons and just a simple clump of grass the rest of the time. We will have times of dryness, needing water. Times of disease, needing healing. Times of winter, feeling as if we may never emerge. But then we do. And in the simple green plants lie the necessary ingredients, roots, structure and timing to bring forth incredible beauty, at just the right time.
Think about all the epic people in God’s incredible story called the Bible. Name one that was in gorgeous, healthy bloom their entire lives. Most of them were barely living clumps of grass a lot of the time. But God’s grace sustained them until just the right time when, with his creative power flowing through them, they bloomed and beauty burst forth. Courage burst forth. Compassion burst forth. Creativity burst forth. Love and life burst forth, and blessed all those around them.
Bloom where you’re planted. You never know who will need the beauty you have to offer at just the right time.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Joel
Joel Searby
