Back to Bromeliads, Making Sense of Knowing Your Place

Recently, I posted about three species of bromeliads:

all three Tillandsias covered by my blog are somewhere in this picture

They are all common in Florida, especially in the Lakeland area where I live. Bet you can find some in your neighborhood.
Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides)
Ball Moss (Tillandsia recurvata)
Southern Needle Leaf (Tillandsia setacea)

Struck by their beauty, and in awe of how they lived, I listened for a deeper message. Sometimes, when you read God's word, you don't remember what you've read, until God shows you something He needs you to see, and then you will remember what you have heard or read.
These plants are not like other plants. They have a different place, and different food. Some plants live on the ground, roots deep in the soil. They have a job to do there. These plants live in trees, and their job is to be in that tree. When an air plant hits the ground, it soon begins to die. They have to stay above. People are like that, especially redeemed people.

Colossians Chapter 3 starts off like this:

1If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

We're called to set our minds on things above. We can't be down below. Just like air plants, we have to be in a different state of existence than the people who still live without Christ. To continue to exist as terrestrial plants means death for our Tillandsia, and so to, we have died in Christ and must live as something else.


Doing this isn't easy. It requires constantly pruning off that which wants to keep us down:

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice,slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Notice that when we "put off" the old self, something new, by necessity, takes it place. Once we were rooted in the world, but when we take up the old, we must be anchored to something else. Let's remember that our anchor is to Jesus, and that we are 'being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator'.