Godgrown

Updates from August, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  Mark 9:36 am on August 17, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  How to Keep From Falling Apart 

   

  Things fall apart…

  This is quite possibly the best title of any book ever written.  Now, the rest of Chinua Achebe’s novel on social inequality and yams is just so-so in my opinion, but the title has always caught my attention – anytime a glass shatters falling from my cupboard, or it a flock of birds finds my freshly washed car, or I watch a faith community that began so healthy begin to pick each other apart.  Things fall apart.

  Each time it is painful to watch and it somehow reminds me of the entire Universe.  Everything about this present creation is falling apart.  The Universe is spinning farther and farther apart, our own sun is a star that is using up a limited amount of fuel and will (if the Lord tarries) burn out.  Our own bodies are failing on us the moment we begin using them, free-radicals and other nemeses plotting against us.

  So how does one fight the tide of such savage dispersion?  With every atom is warring against every other one for survival, how can we seek a future Kingdom of God that remains?

   So there is a Sabbath rest still waiting for the people of God. 10 For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. 11 So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

  - Heb 4:9-11

  Rest does not come naturally in a world where there is a war going on.  To keep things from falling apart in your life, your health, your faith community, and more… it takes intentionality.

  Nothing comes together outside of intentionality.

  We were created by God originally as gardeners, and this vocation provides an interesting view into the idea of intentionality.  I’ve been tending a 15×15 garden space in our urban neighborhood.  Its engendered in me a fabulous sense that “things fall apart.”  Weeds grow, plants droop and need trellises, tools scrape and sculpt the crumbling earth, pests large and small want a piece of my intentionality because they have not invested as I have into growing food.

  Some people build the sand castles, others knock them over.  The writer of Ecclesiastes knew this well (Eccl 3:3) “There is a time to break down, and a time to build up.”  As I’ve stated, the destructive forces of the Universe are always breaking you down, and your job as one of God’s gardeners is to always intentionally be building up.  

  Put yourself in an environment that spurs you on toward a more spiritually-formed life.  If you want to pray, create a space for that prayer to happen, or it never will.  If you want to be a peacemaker, put yourself in situations where you have to practice peace.  This won’t often “just happen.”  And when it does, unless you’ve intentionally prepared, you’ll fail the test – simply because you were not intentional!

  Its not hard, but the hardest part is getting started.

  In God’s Kingdom, Things Come Together.

  

  Tunesntoons is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    Tunesntoons 4:00 pm on August 17, 2011 Permalink

    Except, sometimes it IS hard. BUT it’s not as hard as you think

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  

• 

  Mark 9:36 am on July 11, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Pickin’ and Grinnin’ 

  Yesterday was our first experience at a “U-Pick” farm.  I guess you might count the apple orchards I’ve been to before, but this was a full-out organic farm that invites anyone to step out into the black soil and pick what they’ve worked so hard to grow.

  Raspberries, gooseberries, currents, eggplants, onions, peppers of all kinds.  Peach trees were firming up their fruit and the green beans were right on the verge of being picked.  There is just something right about spending an hour in the hot sun with a straw hat and your hands stained with berry juice.

  Picking these fruits made me think a bit about the passage in 1 Cor 1 where Paul mentions that it was he who planted the seed, whereas Apollos watered it, and God made it grow.  There is a memory I have of my mission trips with Let’s Start Talking, a great missions organization doing good work around the world.  One of the leaders of that organization confessed that when there was a baptism of one of the members in the LST ministry, he would think about all those who had come overseas to contribute to the faith of the person he now had the privilege of baptizing.  They planted the seed, someone else watered, and he was seeing the “harvest.”

  Back to the raspberry fields, I was amazed at how much it takes to grow a bush of raspberries, and even with all that effort, how much it takes to pick even a single pint of the delicious fruit!  It is just so much effort, and makes you appreciate the fruit of your labor.  We brought our berries to a potluck, and they were snarfed down with lightning speed.  I watched as heaping spoonfuls were dolloped onto plates, including mine.  Could anyone else but the pickers possibly know the work that went into the getting that berry to their plate?  Could I possibly know how much it takes for God to bring someone’s heart to the point of conversion?

  Harvesting is such a wonder to behold, as is spiritual transformation – and I’m happy to be a small part it.

  
   
• 

  Mark 9:42 am on May 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Forget Buying Local, “Buy Social!” 

  I’ve been having a lot of fun at the farmer’s markets so far this year.  My wife Katrina over at her site Art & Table can tell you more about that, plus show you some of her delicious meals made on the cheap with fresh produce.

  But it has me thinking some about where my dollars go.  In a booming economy, it seemed no one minded giving their hard-earned dollars to big companies that moved all the money to one side of the boat – tipping us toward a capsize.  Well, I don’t want to go into the water.

  Instead, a few years ago we as a society remembered what it was like to buy things from each other.  Rather than a computerized woman checking out our oatmeal creme pies and CoCo Puffs, now we’re buying locally – handing cash (or in some cases, local currency!) across a fold-up card table in exchange for a heirloom tomato picked this morning in a farm just outside of town.

  You know that feeling you get after a cross-country flight?  That’s how your tomato feels too.  …Buying local is great for taste, and your pocket book.

  But there’s something I’m adding to the long litany in your purchasing portfolio:

  BUY SOCIAL!

  I’m finding my friends and family are taking advantage of our current economy along with the rise of Facebook and other sites like it to step into a new venture.  My sister-in-law sells wickless candles, my friend sells gourmet meals, two of my cousins just released their first album (rock and folk), and my mom sells health products.  I’m certain that I can get into the paper goods business, selling all my friends and family toilet paper and such.

  Just think – the more connected we all become, the more we become self-marketers, (every status update is a promotion of you.)  If you wanted to make money what better place to advertise than to your friends and family on a place where they spend an average of 45mins a day waiting for you to say something?

  Now, no one wants a nag – and we’ll all have to learn to continue to treat our friends and family as real, honest people – something corporations with million-dollar commercials forgot a long time ago.  Maybe with a real, honest social connection, we’ll know how to best keep our “warm market” from becoming “warmed over.”  I love my family and friends more than I want their business.  Much much more!

  And it works.  I’m finding that my family and friends involved in this new economy: 1) deeply respect the boundaries of marketing to me and 2) we are engaging each other in new ways as we talk about the products and services they truly believe in!

  I love handing money to a local farmer – but I really love handing money to a friend or family member for goods and services.  It is as if I am once again looking at changing my buying habits – why buy from Sam Walton’s family when I can buy from my own?