I bought my wife flowers for Valentine’s Day (super original, right?).

My wife loves hydrangeas and loves having fresh flowers in our home, so rather than getting her a bouquet of cut flowers that would only last a few days, I got her some in a flowerpot – this way they’d last longer.

At least – I thought they would.

Barely a week later and her hydrangeas were almost dead.  They were wilted, withered, and barely hanging on.

We watered them.

We moved them in and out of the sun.

We placed them on different parts of the porch.

We did everything we knew how breathe new life into her flowers, but nothing worked.

But my wife had one last trick up her sleeve.  She repotted the plant.  She found a slightly larger pot, filled it with new soil, and transplanted the hydrangeas and wouldn’t you know – the flowers burst back to life.

One day they looked dead, just moments away from becoming potpourri, and the next morning they’re more vibrant and alive than the day I brought them home.  When my wife first saw how beautiful they were, she was convinced I went and bought her new flowers and switched out the old!  But no such trickery was at play here.  They were the same exact flowers, only now they were and in a new pot and were fully alive.

We tried a lot of things to revive her plant, but the only thing that had any real, meaningful impact was changing where it was planted.

That might seem like a small thing, but the scriptures suggest differently.

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law both day and night.  That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.  ~ Psalm 1:1-3 (NIV)

Where we’re planted matters.

A plant’s roots can only drink up the nutrients available to them.  If the nutrients just aren’t there in the soil in which it’s planted, it doesn’t matter how bad the plant needs them, and it doesn’t matter how healthy the roots may be, the plant can’t find what just isn’t there.

We’re a lot like plants – where we’re planted matters – and according to Psalm 1, there is no better place to be planted than in the law of the Lord (the Bible).

As human beings, we are often torn between pleasure and purpose, between delight and discipline, between what we want and what we need, between what we want right now and what we want most.

Psalm 1 teaches is there is a way out of this tension – this conflict doesn’t have to be the story of our lives.

The way out is to make the purposes of God our greatest pleasure.

The way out is to learn to delight in discipline.

The way out is to learn to love God’s law.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

The promise of Psalm 37 only makes sense when we realize that God doesn’t promise us to give us everything we want, but to actually change our desires into the kinds of cravings God is eager and able to give us without limit or ration.

When God becomes our greatest delight, our deepest desires begin to reflect the heart and character of God and what we want becomes more and more consistent with God’s heart - God loves to give us those kinds of things.

Our lives will always gravitate towards our greatest desires, and when those desires are things other than God, they will never produce life in us – they can’t.  Desires disconnected from the goodness of God are like my wife’s hydrangeas – they can have everything they need and still be one day from death.  The flowers had to be replanted to thrive.

The same is true with us – we too must be replanted in the soil of God’s Word until there is no division between our delight and God’s discipline.  When God is our greatest desire and this leads us to delight in God’s Word, then and only then will we find the kind of life in which we can bear fruit and weather the storms and seasons of life.

So, may we replant ourselves in the truth of God’s word again and again and again until God’s purpose for our lives becomes our deepest pleasure.