There is a plant (you know it well) that not only produces a beautiful flower, it purifies its environment as well. In fact, this flower is often intentionally planted with that very purpose in mind.
Sunflowers are one of the unique contributors to that group of plants know as hyperaccumulators. These remarkable plants not only survive... they actually thrive in toxic environs, tolerating levels of poisons that would kill most other plants.
This is why they’re frequently used in cleaning up contaminated land and water (a process called phytoremediation).
Remember the famous nuclear disasters in Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) which dumped radioactive cesium and strontium, as well as heavy metals like lead and uranium into the soil and water?
Sunflowers were planted in both instances to help with the cleanup!
Which leads me to suggest that the sunflower is an excellent metaphor
for God’s purpose for His children in this world.
Scripture makes it undeniably clear that God plants His children where He places us to have a purifying effect on our surroundings... our environment. Often, that environment incudes regions that are toxic. Poisonous.
Consider the Old Testament luminary, Joseph. Listen to his words:
...God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God;.... (Genesis 45:5-8)
Talk about a toxic environment! Ancient Egypt had more gods in their pantheon than could be numbered. If it existed, you could just about say Egypt had a god for it.
And yet that’s where God planted Joseph.
You are the salt of the earth ... You are the light of the world, says our Lord. (Matthew 5:13-14)
He plants us where He chooses to be people of influence and impact... people He can use to reach and redeem... to rescue others from the toxic environment of the world’s system and alienation from Him.
Too often, we Christians look at a poisonous environment as something God is doing to us instead of as something He wants to do in us and with us.
We take it as punishment. We take it as God being mad at us, or some such.
Rember the words of Joseph, “...God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20)
Your environment may be poisonous in some areas. Perhaps it’s your work place. Maybe it is an unbelieving or rebelling spouse. Ill health can be a kind of toxic environment if we let it.
Toxic environments... poisonous places can be hard.
But I encourage you to remember that God isn’t doing this to you. His purpose is to do something in you and through you. That’s why He planted you where you are.
Remember the sunflower. They weren’t planted around Chernobyl and Fukushima in order to kill sunflowers.
Blessings,
Yes! By His grace, we are able to participate in His transformation of whatever He has planted us in the midst of.
I've found that the only way to do that sustainably, powerfully, and victoriously, though, is by asking Him to expose and deal with what ever is in ME that needs cleaned-up first -- anything IN ME that is a resonant-match to the poison that's around me is going to cause all of that junk to get "stuck" on it's way out.
Satan need not have anything of himself in me any longer now that Christ lives in me and is conforming me into HIS image...
"I [Jesus] will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and HE [satan] HAS NOTHING in Me." (John 14:30)
Huge part of the work I do with my coaching clients.
Mike this is so good, thank you! My article for tomorrow is also about Joseph, centering on Genesis 50:20. Thank you for sharing, I did not know the Sunflower was so beneficial. Hope you and Susan have a great week!