Plants are not exempt from struggling like humans, but they struggle in a different way. The above pictures are days 1 through 6 of the same individual bloom on my Christmas Cactus as it struggled to open, and then the plant on day 8 for the most part in full bloom with one or two more buds opening every day. This plant had only produced one or two blooms for the last few years and I was about ready to give up on it. Then I read on the internet about the lighting they prefer. Once I moved the plant to a different room with the appropriate amount of natural and filtered light (and minus the artificial light in the evenings), the buds started popping out all over the plant. I counted over 50 buds at one point and then some more pushed through. It was a struggle for this plant in its original environment because it wasn’t getting what it needed in terms of light and dark.
“…Our struggle to experience more peace
Ann Spangler in Becoming a Woman at Peace
is really a struggle to know God more intimately.”
I read that statement in my morning devotions in this book and thought how true it is! The more we experience God intimately involved in our loves and give Him our love, devotion, obedience, and trust, the more at peace we will be. So in reverse, if we are struggling for more peace in our lives, we need to give [more of] ourselves to God and endeavor to know Him more fully and personally.
Knowing the lighting my Christmas Cactus needed was a necessary part of its environment and growth. We need to inspect our environment to see if it is good for us as Christians or if we need to make a change. Some people think they can continue to indulge in certain practices or go to questionable places and it won’t affect them. Nothing is farther from the truth. Where we go and what we do is absolutely essential to the Christian life. We need places of peace, encouragement, nurturing, and growth if we want to experience the Christian life in its fullest. If the places you go and the things you participate in do not reflect that, it will be hard to maintain a personal relationship with the Lord…just like it was hard for my cactus to produce buds when it was getting too much of the wrong type of light.
Proper nutrition is also an important part of growth. I think we all like our snack foods and drinks, but we can’t live on them. We have to eat the good stuff like vegetables, meat, and fruits, too. We can have our snacks, but our body begs us to limit them so it can survive. If you don’t give a plant enough water, it’s going to shrivel up and die. If you want it to bloom, you need to give it the proper nutrients it needs by fertilizing the soil. But nutrition isn’t just about what we feed our physical bodies. Nutrition also involves what we feed our minds. I don’t exclusively read the Bible. I read other books and articles. But we need to review those books and articles for appropriate content that does not contain things that will draw us away from the Lord.
Timing is essential to plants as well as humans. Certain plants like a cactus or Poinsettia need more hours of darkness, sometimes beyond the natural light and dark of day. Originally I had my cactus in the living room where it had additional hours of artificial light in the evenings until I went to bed. When I moved the cactus to a room that I don’t use in the evening, its leaves and buds improved because it needed more darkness and less artificial light. There’s two things I’m learning from that. The first is that sometimes we need more down time to rest or reflect on the day. The other is that sometimes things that we think are good, like artificial light, may not be the best for us. Make sure to get plenty of The Light, not substitute light.
Are you struggling in your Christian walk today? Check your environment (where you hang out), your eating habits (how much of the Word you’re consuming), and your timing (Is your day too cluttered or inhibited to hear His voice?). If you don’t have as much peace as you’d like, if you’re struggling, how well do you know God? He wants us to come to Him with all our concerns, everything that’s going on in our lives. He is our safe place, our strength, our hiding place at all times, but especially in times of trouble because in times of trouble, we can go to Him in full assurance that He will not leave us—no struggling there!
“God is our refuge and strength,
always ready to help in times of trouble.
So we will not fear when earthquakes come
and the mountains crumble into the sea.”
Psalm 46:1-2, NLT