Blooming Forever

Blooming Forever

Isaiah 27:2-6

            We expect flowers to bloom in the spring and summer.  As the old song says, “The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la.”  It’s true, most of our flowering plants reach their peak in the warmer months.  Azaleas bloom in the spring.  Roses bloom in the summer.  Various other flowering plants produce blooms throughout both seasons. 

            As I write, there are four large hibiscus plants in pots in our garage.  They bloom throughout the summer and early fall.  One pot also contains two mandevilla, one white and one red.  All these plants should have died years ago.  In our climate (northwest Mississippi) hibiscus and mandevilla are not supposed to last through the winter, and every winter most if not all the leaves fall off.  Yet, for several years, each spring, new leaves appear, and then blossoms, to enrich our patio and our lives.

            Some plants wait until fall to bloom—chrysanthemums for instance.  When I was an undergraduate, many years ago, an enterprising group on campus sold “mums for moms” every parents’ weekend.  We often have mums blooming as late as October.  It’s interesting that some of our azaleas also bloom again at that time.

            Two plants bloom in the winter.  We have been quite successful growing Christmas cacti.  There is one on my desk at church, now almost fifteen years old.  Two weeks before Christmas it was covered with white blossoms with just a hint of pink in the center.  In our house’s upper room there are two Christmas cacti which even now, almost two weeks after December 25, are covered with deep pink blooms.  I try to go upstairs once or twice a week just to let them know someone appreciates them.

            The most familiar Christmas plant is the poinsettia.  Every year we have a few at our house.  Some are given to us.  Some we purchase in memory of loved ones who have attained their final reward.  They grace our church during Advent, then come home at the end of the Christmas season.  We plant them all in one large pot and keep them for a year or more.  True, they never again reach the red splendor they attain that first Christmas season, since we have no means of placing them in the absolute dark to encourage their change of color; but they grace our home with their green beauty.

            Isaiah had much to say about blooming.  It is one of his most powerful metaphors for Israel’s return from captivity.  He assures the nation that, despite the winter of its exile, God’s planting will bloom once more, and bloom in the place God has chosen for it to grow.  “In days to come,” God says, “Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit.”  And that rooting—that blooming will be in the Promised Land.

            God never breaks promises.  If God says Israel will bloom, then Israel will bloom.  Streams will break forth in the desert (32:2), and water the dry thirsty land.  Like a tree planted by water, Israel will thrive.

            Israelis believe their return to Eretz Israel is the fulfillment of this promise, and it well may be.  But there is more to the promise than this—more to the fulfillment.

            Christians believe that, in part, the fulfillment of Isaiah’s promises is Jesus Christ.  We used to sing,            

Jesus, Jesus, Lily of the Valley,

Bloom in all your beauty in the garden of my heart;

            This is the promise for us:  that Jesus will bloom, not just for a season, not just for a few years, but bloom forever.  The perfect flower in our hearts’ gardens.