Concrete Sunflower
Alan Dusel / Audio Ministry Coordinator
Every year in early to mid-May, my wife Brenda and I talk about what types of flowers we want to plant in our backyard. We have a border around the patio, and a flower bed near our fence where we usually turn over the soil and plant annuals. We have planted various types of flowers through the years with varying amounts of success, often depending on the amount of rain we get and the number of hungry rabbits living under our shed.
This May, as usual, we made the annual trek to our favorite garden shop and selected our flowers, along with flowering plant food and numerous bags of mulch. We also decided that it might be nice to throw a couple packs of sunflower seeds in our bed near the fence, so we grabbed a few packs of seeds on the way to the checkout, along with some morning glory seeds to plant near our trellis in the same area.
My wife (and I) love to watch and enjoy the birds that visit our feeders near our patio. She has learned that the black-oil sunflower seed is a big hit with various types of birds, and so she keeps the feeders full throughout the warm season. Inevitably some sunflower seeds fall to the ground and end up sprouting on their own around the feeders.
So, about a week before Memorial Day, we got our shovels and trowels out and did our gardening and planting, watering daily, and waited for the plants to thrive and the seeds begin to sprout. We filled up our bird feeders and sat back enjoying a tall glass of ice water as we celebrated our hard work.
Within about seven days we began to see sprouts of morning glories and sunflowers popping out of the ground. A few weeks later as I was doing my weeding, I noticed a small plant growing out of the crack in the concrete on our back patio. We often get weeds sprouting up from the cracks, and I usually pull them … however this plant was different. It looked very similar to the fledgling sunflower plants in our bed near the fence. I decided to leave it alone and see what came of the little plant.
Over the next couple of weeks this little sprout has grown at an amazing rate, and my wife and I both marvel at the seemingly miraculous growth of that little plant growing out of a crack in the concrete! It was doing much better and growing at a much faster rate than any of our other plants that we planted, including the sunflowers in our bed along the fence.
This week our little “concrete sunflower” has bloomed and is now over 6 ft. tall … and still growing! We are both amazed at this gigantic sunflower … somehow a seed, unbeknownst to us, found its way into that crack, germinated, and found a way to not only survive, but to thrive under such adverse conditions!
This beautiful sunflower growing out of the crack in our patio is a wonderful illustration of how nature seemingly finds a way to grow … and not only grow, but to thrive in difficult conditions and situations, not unlike our journeys through life, and the struggles and discontentment we often face at times along the way. If we search in God’s Word, we find a verse in Matthew 19:26, which says: “Nothing you have done in the past, no setback you’ve experienced can keep you from flourishing. With God all things are possible.”
In the same way that seeds are planted, we are planted, too. Sometimes we are planted in a meticulous, organized way. We pick the seemingly “perfect” spot to plant ourselves, thinking it’s safe here to bloom and blossom. But we don’t always have a choice in where we are planted.
Our current season of life may be something we chose—moving to a new city, starting a new job, getting married and starting a family. At the same time, our current season of life may be something we didn’t choose—Accept where You’re being Planted!
Whatever the case, we’ve been planted. We’ve been planted physically wherever we live, spiritually in the spiritual warfare around us, and relationally with the people we interact with.
God is the one who plants us, and while I’ll be the first to admit that I often doubt God’s timing, I have to remind myself that I can’t see the end game like He can. He is far more knowledgeable and wiser than I am. So trusting Him means surrendering my will to His.
“I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of Me in their hearts, that they may not turn from Me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all My heart and all My soul.” Jeremiah 32:40-41 (ESV)
It’s time for us all to embrace and accept where God has us for the current season we are in, be content in our situations and in what we have and begin to “Bloom Where We are Planted!”