Bloom Where You’re Planted
“I am God’s Project.” This was the title of one of my siblings and my favorite cassette tapes when I was a little . We referred to it lovingly as ‘the yellow tape.’ My mom told me that she just saw that tape out the other day in my dad’s study! One of our favorite songs on the tape was Bloom Where You’re Planted. My sister and I even sang the song in church for ‘special music’ one Sunday. The words have become so much a part of me that, 20 years later, they were readily available at the hospital bedside of a woman I ministered to as a student chaplain a few summers ago. I still remember the words now:
Bloom where you’re planted;
Show what you’re worth.
God has his flowers all over the earth.
Bloom where you’re planted and if you’re sincere,
You can get anywhere on earth from here.Bloom where you’re planted
And become a part
Of God’s lovely garden – the pride of his heart.
Bloom where you’re planted and if you’re sincere,
You can get anywhere on earth from here.
Bloom where you’re planted. What does this mean?
I’ve been meeting with a woman in her early fifties. She is sensing that God might be calling her to seminary. She’s had conversations with a few people and some have encouraged her to ‘bloom where she’s planted.’
She thought she’d come to some peace about staying right where she’s at – following God’s will in the little things of life and ministering quietly by writing prayer newsletters, mentoring a woman, and correcting Bible lessons for a prison ministry.
But then, one evening, she read Romans 10 as a part of her daily devotional and her eye fell on these verses:
“‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”
She can’t shake her sense that God is calling her to preach. And so she continues to wonder. Is God calling her to stay in one garden, or to move to another?
What are your thoughts about blooming where one is planted? Your questions? Your experiences?