Bloom while You Can

All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field...

 The grass withers, the flower fades but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah 40:6b, 8

You have heard the old saying, “Bloom where you are planted!”  It’s an old cliché reminding us to not always be looking over the fence for greener pastures.   Instead until God moves you some place, do your best to live life, serve others and walk with God right where you are.  If you are constantly planning how you will live and serve in the next place, you will never truly live well anywhere.  So instead of always hoping for something better, rejoice in and walk with God right where you are – “bloom where you are planted.”

Today however, I want to change that cliché a little.  I want to say to you “Bloom while you can.”  What do I mean?  Well I thought of this today while I was walking to work – looking at all the beautiful flower boxes hanging from window after window.  Germans love their flowers.  This time of year, and I am told, throughout the summer, Germany is decked out with flowers.  Linda and I were remarking the other day about all the beautiful roses you see.  They are everywhere..  This starts as soon as it gets warm and stays warm.  The Germans don’t waste any time in buying flowers and planting them.  After all the season for flowers won’t last forever.  Fall and winter will come.  The days will grow dark and cold again.  There will be harsh frost.  Then the flowers will fade and die.  So if you are a flower you have to “bloom while you can.” 

I think Isaiah is saying the same thing about you and me in the 40^th chapter.  “All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field...  The grass withers, the flower fades…”  The meaning of that text is obvious.  Our time here is limited.  We are born, we grow strong for a while but then our strength fails.  We fade.  Eventually we die.  We won’t live forever.  Just as for the flowers, the fall and winter of life are coming.  Therefore we need to “bloom while we can.”

Now I know that all sounds very sobering and full of law.  But I think there is Gospel here.  After all, temporary though we are – we have beauty to offer.  He compares our beauty to the beauty of the flowers.  Wow!  God has made us as His beautiful creation. Even marred by sin, this beauty is still there.  You see it in the love between a husband and wife, mom and a baby… in the little acts of kindness people do for one another.  This is good news for all who struggle to like themselves or see any beauty in themselves. God looks at you and He sees beauty…beauty He created in you. 

Indeed in Jesus you and I have a beauty to offer that erases all traces of ugliness from life.  We have the beauty of God’s love shown us in the manger, on the cross and at the empty tomb… the beauty of forgiveness that Christ purchased for all people… This is the beauty God gives us to offer to the world… to our friends and enemies… to neighbors and strangers… We offer it not by pressuring and condemning people around us but by loving and caring for them unconditionally just as God has loved and cared for us.  It bothers me that far too often we Christians are known for condemning people around us. When it comes to the world around us, what we should be known for is the beauty of loving people unconditionally!

That’s the one permanent lasting thing that we have in this world… that we have to offer others… 

the beauty of God’s love in Jesus.  He is the Word of God who stands forever.  Isn’t that cool?  

Even through our lives are temporary.  Even though we will wither and our beauty will fade, as 

we love the people God brings into our lives, we are able to share with them a beauty that lasts

 forever – the beauty of God’s love in Christ.  So knowing the fall and winter are coming it’s 

important that we get to it… that we not waste time… that we “bloom while we can.”