Bloom Where You Are Planted
During a recent morning, I exited off the busy interstate to take a heavily traveled road after a busy morning commute. It was a beautiful morning and the morning sun glistened through my car window. As I waited for a traffic light to turn green to make my way to a morning errand, I gazed out my car window and a breathtaking field of wildflowers caught my attention. A field of wildflowers was quietly nestled right beside the exit for the interstate and a busy, well-traveled road.
I took a detour from my errand and turned at the busy intersection into a gas station and paint store parking lot. I parked my car and hopped out and walked to the field of wildflowers. A mockingbird was perched on a tree and singing another bird’s tune as the wind freely made the wildflowers dance under the morning sky. They were untouched and free to grow uniquely and beautifully right where they were.
As I took some time to admire their beauty, I thought that these flowers were a poignant reminder of our lives at times. Those vibrant wildflowers seemed so out of place. There is beauty right where you are even if you aren’t surrounded by the most ideal or desirable life circumstances.The concrete parking lot and commercial building sat drably in contrast to the masterpiece of nature freely blooming and blossoming right there in this busy part of town.
Just as those flowers seemed so out of place in the place beside the asphalt streets, grey parking lots and forgettable commercial development - those flowers brought beauty to a place where there was none. Life isn’t easy and life isn’t fair, but your life can be beautiful. The contrast made ordinary wildflowers even more beautiful.
Maybe you’ve been through unimaginable heartache or sadness or felt that your career hasn’t shaped up the way you had planned. Maybe healing physically hasn’t been as you had hoped. No one wants to go through difficulties, but if we didn’t how would we deeply know joy, the beautiful and what’s truly important in life?
Maybe your life experiences can bring hope and encouragement to others. You can offer a kind word or helping hand and bring beauty and hope in unlikely places. Wherever you find yourself today, know that today offers the promise of beauty in unexpected places and opportunities to blossom right where you are planted. And just remember that if God attends so beautifully to the wildflowers, He will take care of all your needs too!
"Walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.
Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”
Matthew 6:28-33
{Written by: Jenny Cox Holman}