Growing up, my maternal grandmother passed along to me the art of caring for African violets. Those who’ve tended African violets know that the little rascals can be a bit finicky, requiring a higher level of care. Grandma’s violets were always expertly cared for, yielding almost constant blooms.

Well, as I got older, I had the honor of inheriting some of Grandma’s violets. Mimicking the way she cared for the plants, I had relative success. As I’d been taught, I placed my violets in direct sunlight, but while living in my first home in Muscatine, those darn violets just never, ever, bloomed. Tediously, I tended the plants, but nothing ever happened, until I moved to a new home in Muscatine. Lo and behold, within a week – not kidding you – those violets bloomed, and they kept blooming, and blooming, and blooming.

So, what was the difference? Was the sunlight different? Or was the air in the house more or less humid? Perhaps. There’s likely a scientific answer in there somewhere, but when I look at those plants, all I continue to think is that in order for those plants to thrive, they needed to be in a different environment.

Though it may be an odd comparison, I wonder if, at times, the same might be true for our lives. I know there have been times I’ve been in an environment in which I couldn’t fully thrive. I was simply surviving – producing plenty of green leaves, but no flowers. Extending the metaphor, I can imagine that – at times – the same could be said about our workplaces, or even the church. We might be producing amazing, strong, green leaves, but no flowers.

So then, what are we to do? Well, taking our cue from my violets, I wonder if sometimes what we need is a change in our environment. Certainly, we can’t always literally move somewhere else, but, to some extent, we can control what is around us. We can control how we spend our time. We can control who we hang out with. We can control what we take in as nutrients – nourishing not only our physical bodies, but our emotional, spiritual, and mental bodies as well.

So, if you were to take stock of your environment around you right now, how would you assess it? Does your environment help you not only survive, but also thrive? Do you find yourself growing, producing flowers, or, have you stagnated? There may be seasons of our lives in which we lie dormant, simply surviving, but thinking of the whole of our lives, I firmly believe that God intends for us to continually grow – growing closer to Christ, growing closer to each other, and growing more and more into who God created each of us to be.

So, in order for that to happen, might there be some things you could do to alter your environment now, so as to increase your chance of growth – your chance of thriving? We might not be able to change everything around us, but simply moving ourselves a bit more into the light, or watering ourselves a bit more frequently, might be a beginning to a whole new season of growth.