There is a beautiful vine growing on our farm.  It grows and blooms like crazy and it is beautiful, but it hasn’t always been beautiful.

We got a start of this plant years ago when there used to be a little Greek restaurant in Volcan.  The owner gave us a start and we had it this struggling little plant in six different places for about four years.  It never died, but it never grew.  Now my horticultural philosophy with plants is to try a plant in a few different places and if it decides to grow, fine, if not . . . it’s history.  Not only did it not grow, it barely hung on to life.  Many times I almost tossed it.  When we first bought our coffee farm, before we started building or redeveloping the coffee farm, tired of seeing this sick thing around, I just stuck it in the ground on the farm.  I told it . . . I do talk to plants . . . and to myself . . . and to God . . . “Plant, it’s now or never!  Grow or die!”

And it has grown!!!  Wow, has it grown.  I admit that it’s grown so well that it requires a lot of trimming and we stick the trimmings in the compost pile and they start growing!  All producing spectacular purple flowers.

Now if I were still preaching, I would have a sermon “illustration” here.  For those of you unaccustomed to pews, a sermon illustration is a little story stuck into a sermon to wake people up and hopefully make a point.

Yes, generally I think the “Bloom where you are planted!” is a good strategy.  But there are times in life when you find yourself “planted” in the wrong place, in a place where you can’t grow, where whatever it is that you need to grow and flourish just isn’t.  And it’s at those moments I think when you need to have the strength and courage to pick up and move and try growing in a more conducive environment.

Growing is what life is all about!  I think it was Bob Dylan who said, “When you stop growing you start to die.”  If he didn’t say it, whoever said it, it was a good thought.  If you aren’t growing through life, then something is wrong.  You can just sit there and take it, or you can do something about it.

Thus endeth the lesson of the vine.