I’m not much of a gardener. I’ve tried to garden a little, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not a fan of being outdoors, so most of my experience with plants has been with those in pots. When I first started out with a few houseplants about twenty-five years ago, my mom told me to watch certain plants that were in small containers.
“That plant will eventually get too big for its container. It will become rootbound, and if you don’t transplant it to a different pot, it will die.”
Rootbound = when a plant’s roots are stopped by a barrier
Like the rootbound plant, sometimes we need to be transplanted.
Transplants represent life changes. They can be a change of actual location or a change of circumstances or a change of relationship.
Even though God, our master caretaker, makes certain that transplants are for our ultimate good, sometimes transplants can be difficult . . . even painful.
Take Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego for example. God didn’t cause their transplant into Babylon, but He allowed it. In Babylon, the three Hebrew children never forgot whose they were, and they never strayed from their convictions. Their steadfast faith impacted the entire nation!
We read of many other transplants in the Bible. Joseph, Abraham, Esther, Ruth, David, Peter, Paul and many others were transplanted. Many of those transplants were painful, but they were all used by God for the saving of souls and for the growth and maturity of the one being transplanted.
How about you? Are you being transplanted? Are you resisting that change, or are you allowing the Lord to work His will through it, which will ultimately allow you to grow beyond your current barriers into the mature Christian He is calling you to be?
Martha Fouts Books 