Over the summer, my brother came to visit for my mom’s birthday celebration. He noticed that we had a plant next to the garbage can in the kitchen. The plant was (is) flourishing although my brother found the placement to be a bit odd. He wasn’t wrong. However, when we moved into the home we sat the plant in a spacious place where it could receive light and be unbothered. Fast forward a few years and the plant is the most beautiful, healthy specimen you could ever imagine. Although it’s been weeks since my brother’s observation, given a set of circumstances that the saints close to me (as well as me) have been navigating, the plant represents the issues of life. We can’t also move to a desired state – physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually – sometimes, we simply must bloom where we are planted.

Isn’t it just like God to allow fruit to come forth even in the most rotten of circumstances? I know God knows what God is doing, but if I’m honest, sometimes it feels as though God’s short term memory is prevailing; as though He’s forgotten that His promises for us are yes and amen. Yet I am reminded that God does His best work when I simply trust and don’t try to figure things out. If I can trust the light to spur the growth and development of a plant, surely I can trust Him to view me (and you) as a plant with great expectations to flourish, despite the circumstances that He’s allowed in our lives. In the end, I surmise this to be a setup for God’s glory to be revealed in the earth.

I Corinthians 7:24 reads, “Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.” If we are to be successful in our “thou shall not be moved” scenario, we must believe the God that called us and the God that keeps us, has us precisely where He desires for our good and for His glory. In this day, it’s easy to get caught up in the belief that others thriving differs from ours – and perhaps it does – but that is not what we are responsible to manage. We are empowered by and through the Holy Spirit to endure, no matter the challenge. But the beauty that our smart selves doesn’t quite comprehend is the how and the why as to God’s shady character that would set us up amidst trash in the first place. I’m not certain that we ever know the “why,” but I certainly can witness that as we trust His hand, even when we can’t see it, we continue to build strength, fortitude and resilience in ways we never imagined. We are surprised perhaps to ourselves, but not to God that we can in fact do hard things, with His help and careful meticulous shaping of us….even when next to trash. In other words, I hear God saying, “It can be whatever,” cause I still got you! Just like the plant, may we seek the light through our Heavenly Father and remain unbothered by the rest.