Thursday, January
21
Opening Prayer: Lord God, we confess: our lifestyles are too
busy, our focus self-centered, and our world is consumed with fear, greed, and
pride. Sometimes, Lord, we react to the
pains of others with a flippant "who cares?" Yet, in our more receptive times, when Your
Voice calls to our innermost beings, we know with absolute certainty two things
we desperately need: To be loved…and to love.
Hear us, Lord, grateful, thankful to experience occasional breakthrough
moments of unconditional love. Be with
those whose hearts are broken, demoralized by life's blows; those who mirror to
us that unfairness and suffering is not lightened by pat answers or avoidance,
but is made bearable because of fellow travelers who truly do care, and show
it. Walk with us, God. Our trek is not always easy, our vision
shortsighted, our love often hidden. May
we seek the deeper places where our compassion, our joy reflect you, the God
who is Love. Amen. ~Virgil Fry
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:6-9
Journal: How are you planting and watering seeds in your
soul these days? How? What growth can you see? What is God growing
in you these days?
Reflection:
At times it is so easy to overestimate our own
importance, particularly when it comes to the Kingdom of God. We get the
feeling from time to time, or should I say we deceive ourselves into believing
from time to time, that if we don't make things happen for God, them no
one will. What a great reminder from Paul that God does very well on His
own, thank you. We are not a necessity. Ours is not to make the
seed, or the person, or the church, or whatever may be before us at the
moment, grow. That is God's job, and done in God's own time I might
add. The salvation or growth of people is not something I can make
happen no matter how hard I try. Ours is a much simpler task, to
plant and to water—or in the case of some of the other parables, to scatter the
seed. What happens from there is the important part and fortunately—or
unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—the part we cannot control
.
I planted some seeds by my front
door a few summers ago, hoping that one day they would turn into beautiful
flowers. The container they came in warned me that nothing would likely
come of the planting until the next spring or early summer, and there was
absolutely nothing I could do to speed up the process. All I could do was
to plant them and then consistently water the soil and let the soil, the seed,
and the sunshine do its work. It was a slow and hidden process that
would need to occur. And as I faithfully watered each day, I secretly
hoped (but never told anyone) that somehow the flowers would miraculously
appear any day. No Luck. Nothing. In fact, I became so
impatient and so filled with doubt that there was anything really going on
under the soil that I was often tempted to dig them up just to see if, indeed,
there was any growth taking place at all. Of course that would've been a
ridiculous thing to do, and would certainly damage or delay the process,
but I have to admit that I was tempted nonetheless.
But planting is just that way, there
is a letting go that is a necessary part. There is a trust. There
is a knowledge of our role...and God's. There is a patience necessary, as
well as an attentiveness. But also, there is a lot of waiting.
Waiting on the soil and the sun and the water and the seed to all do what they
were made to do. You just can't make a lot happen. We
can just work to make sure the conditions (the space, if you will) are right
and make sure the seed is well planted—by means of conversation, relationship,
writing, reading, or whatever your means of planting might be—and leave the
rest to God, and to the waterer of course.
Watering is another proposition
altogether. It's a little more involved. It's
a little more constant. There is a little more attention
necessary, and a little more work required over the long haul. Last
summer I planted a flowerbed in my back yard, in a spot I love to sit and enjoy
the silence and the beauty of God's creation. I made sure the flower bed
was in a good spot for sun, and had good rich soil, but I didn't really think
through the watering process. Actually, we don't even have a water
supply to that part of the yard. Unless of course you use a hose, but in
this case the flower bed was so far from a spigot that 3-4 hoses
joined together wouldn't even reach it. I thought of running the
water line out to that part of the yard. I thought of rain barrels.
I even thought of trying to use the water produced by the
condensation from my air conditioner. And after I shot all of those ideas
entirely full of holes, I just decided to dip a bucket in the creek that runs
along the back of our property line and do it by hand. So every day of
the summer I took my 10 gallon bucket, dipped it in the creek several
times, and watered my flowers. It was a pretty labor intensive
process, especially when the dry season came.
It reminded me of Teresa of Avila
and her thoughts on prayer as the way of watering the garden of our
souls. She mentions that prayer comes in seasons: some when you must use
a bucket and get it by hand, some when you use a waterwheel to help bring it
from its source, some when you can water by means of a stream or
brook where the water flows more freely and easily, and lastly when it
comes from the rains of God's Spirit as it falls from the heavens and drenches
and soaks the ground. Well, in my case, in absence of a waterwheel or
irrigation system, my method was to continuously carry the water from the
creek, and pray for rain. For most of the summer the bucket was a
necessity, but O the joy for several weeks toward the end of the
summer when the rains fell about every day. And on those days when it
rained I rejoiced and really began to understand what St. Teresa was talking
about—rejoicing in those days and those seasons when God takes over and prayer
just comes like rains from the heavens.
But now back to the point of
the whole passage: So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything,
but only God, who makes things grow. We should never take ourselves
too seriously, or think of ourselves as too important in this process. In
fact, we are nothing. We can produce nothing. Fruitfulness only
comes from God. He is the One who makes things grow. Mine is to plant
or to water, to pray and to pay attention, to trust and to wait. And
watch what he does...and rejoice. Thanks be to God.
Prayer
Closing Prayer: Plant in me your good and perfect will,
O Lord, that I might totally submit and completely surrender to your desires
for me. Grow your good fruit in me. For the sake of your son Jesus. Amen.
