Friends' Favorites - Blooming

When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
Romans 8:11 The Message

My sister sent me an email with pictures of plants and trees growing in seemingly impossible places. Some were quite extraordinary. A few years back, God taught me a very valuable life lesson in this.

I was driving on a major highway here in Texas and a sapling was growing up out of the concrete on an overpass. For all practical intents and purposes, there was no way that seed should have rooted and grown there. It was concrete. There was not enough dirt, it had not been cultivated or properly prepared for growth, and literally thousands of cars a day whizzing by at 70+mph. Nothing - absolutely nothing - that should have encouraged it to grow, let alone allowed it to flourish. And yet it did what it was supposed to do – what it was created to do – despite the circumstances because God the Giver of Life had fashioned that seed with life in it from the time He created the world.

He's done the same for us. We may have fallen between a rock and a hard place and just wanted to die. Nothing and no one to nurture us, to care for us. Perhaps in perilous, unsafe surroundings. It may appear as if there's no way for us to flourish and grow. Fact - All seeds must die before they can break forth with life. Truth - God the Giver of Life fashioned us to grow and flourish in Him before the foundation of the world. It doesn't matter what we didn't have or what we don't have now, God is our Provider.

In Him, we can bloom no matter what it looks like or where we're planted.

Prayer:

Father,
          You are the Creator - Master of all Creation. You spoke it all into being! You flung the planets, moons and stars into space into their perfect places. And You have placed us exactly where You want us. And the most amazing thing is that even if we pluck ourselves up and fall into a hard place, when we turn back to You we find that Jesus is our Rock and we can grow. Father, help those who have fallen into a hard place. Let them seek Your face like plants seek the sun. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen