Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness,
in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.
James 1: 21
I am obsessed with geraniums. Not all geraniums. Just the heritage geranium that’s been in our family for four generations. In the 1930s, Mom’s grandma gave a cutting from her favorite geranium to my grandma. My grandma gave Mom a cutting in the 1970s. A few years back, Mom gave one to me.
Once it rooted in a glass of water, I planted it in a pot and pampered it all summer long. When the weather turned cold, I hauled the pot inside and placed it in front of a south window. After at winter’s worth of pampering, I snipped off cuttings in March, rooted them in water, and planted them outside come warm weather. Each year, I repeat the process, and this year, heritage geraniums rule our lawn – in flower beds, hanging pots, and container gardens.
Uh-huh, it’s an obsession. But a magnificent one. Because my geraniums are a living illustration of Jesus’ parable of the vine and the vine dresser. Every fall, when the plants are moved inside, they respond in the same way. The biggest, healthiest leaves turn brown. When I pluck them off, clusters of small, bright green leaves sprout in their place. Every March, when I prune the plants, more leaves sprout from the stumps that remain. A few days after the cuttings are placed in water, their biggest, healthiest leaves turn brown and drop. Inevitably, roots sprout from the joints where leaves once grew. When warm weather comes, and I plant the rooted cuttings outside, the same thing happens. Healthy leaves turn brown. New, abundant growth replaces them. Every fall, when the weather turns cold, more vigorous geraniums get hauled into the house than the year before.
Each season, as the geraniums struggle with new transitions, I reflect upon my resistance to changes in my family, my work, and my spiritual life. Once I adjust to new circumstances, I want things to stay the same. Forever. But God doesn’t work that way. He constantly prunes me and all his children. He plunks us into new environments. He strips away our dead stuff. He initiates new growth in the places we once hurt the most. When we submit to the pruning and watering and planting and transformation of his Holy Spirit, we keep growing. We bear fruit. We multiply.
I never met the great-grandmother who passed on the cutting of the geraniums her descendants still tend. I think of her when the blood red geraniums blossoms unfurl, and I know a piece of her lives inside me.
My eye hasn’t seen the God whose word is implanted in the garden of my heart and watered by the Holy Spirit. But when I contemplate the cross and consider his blood shed for sinners, I know he lives within me. Grounded by his love, I begin to grow.
