Don't Be a Potplant

We used to have two pot plants at our front door. I say used to because they aren't there any more.


This was back before we had moved in to our house, and it was newly built welcoming us only on weekends. We picked out some nice green plants in dark grey pots and set them either side of the door.


We also had a door mat there, but because we live on hill near the sea, it gets windy and the mat is always blowing away. Several times when I was putting the mat back after retrieving it from half way down the hill I thought, "Something looks weird about our front door."


It wasn't until one morning that I woke up and suddenly it came to me - "The pot plants are gone!"


It's not that windy at our place. I can only guess someone took them. Good luck to them - I hope the plants are getting more water in their new homes than they did in ours.


But pot plants are like that - easy to pick up and move. Unsecured and easy to do whatever you want with, really.


I'd like to see someone drive sneakily away with a full size oak tree.


And yet a lot of us are pot plant Christians. We have shallow, pot bound roots, and will never really grow to our full potential. We're easily moved and uprooted; we rely on someone else to remember to feed and water us.


We only get the Bible read to us at church. We only have fellowship on Sundays and then we 'get on with our lives.' We only pray when someone else directs us, when we are wilting, or when something bad happens - like finding ourselves being carried off by an enemy who notices how small and unsecured we are and decides to take us for a ride.


Don't be a pot plant.


Be "strong, like a tree planted by a river. The tree produces fruit in season, and its leaves don't die. Everything they do will succeed." Psalm 1:3

A strong tree has deep and far reaching roots. It doesn't rely on someone with a watering can to come along and give it a drink. It is tapped into the river of living water, it's is nourished by the fertile soil in which it is planted. "Like trees planted in the Temple of the Lord, they will grow strong in the courtyards of our God. When they are old, they will still produce fruit; they will be healthy and fresh." Psalm 92:14


Grow deep roots in God. Get out of the little pot and plant yourself in God's garden, immerse yourself in His kingdom. Then nothing can touch you, nothing can carry you off, and you will bear real fruit.