BLOOM AWAY

During my lifetime I've watched the coming and going, and coming back, of this phrase often put on decor plaques: “Bloom where you are planted.” I was reminded of it the other day as I snatched random weeds growing under the hedge of “Knockout Roses” in our front yard. My husband planted a long line of these brilliant pink roses by the sidewalk in front of our house in honor of his late mother, who loved pink and filled her life and home with that color.

I'm always amazed how desolate they look in the winter. We add further punishment by taking a hedge clipper to the top and sides to shape them. But they roar back, providing color the whole summer. They're not finicky like the “tea roses” that I have to carefully prune and daily deadhead. They just bloom away where they've planted.

Curious about where the “bloom where you are planted” slogan came from, I was surprised to trace it back to St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), who served as the bishop of Geneva and was respected for his leadership and spiritual walk. He is recorded as saying this: “True charity has no limit; for the love of God has been poured into our hearts by His Spirit dwelling in each one of us, calling us to a life of devotion and inviting us to bloom in the garden where He has planted and directing us to radiate the beauty and spread the fragrance of His Providence” (emphasis added).

The Bible has several commands to be fruitful. The first is God's command to Adam and Eve after Creation (Genesis 1:28). Another compares a fruitful tree to a believer whose trust in God frees him from worries and who never fails to bear fruit (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Psalm 1 has a similar message.

The “bloom” idea goes deeper—against our natural inclinations—later in Jeremiah, where the context is the exile of the Israelites to Babylon. Here they are—captives, far from home, dumped into a foreign land, despised and stripped of hope. There seems no way out. But God tells them: build houses, plant gardens for food, let your kids marry and build families, and....”seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7-8).

That's the same chapter that has the more famous quote about God's plans to prosper them and give them a future and a hope (v. 11-13). But it wouldn't happen if their motto was “gloom where you are planted.” They had to bloom where they were planted. They weren't living in pleasant little bungalows in their native land. They were slaves. But this was what life had to be, now. And their response to bloom instead of  "gloom" would make the difference.

Funny, that advice still makes sense in our thorny world.