Digging in God's Garden...

It is said that we live in an age of fast change, rapidly changing technology, quick turnarounds; we live at the speed of change says the title of a management book in my library. That’s true I guess, but those who ride to work each day on SEPTA's rapid transit system tell me otherwise!

We like speed. 0-60 in 4.8 seconds. But despite our penchant for fast, life is not always so. Most of our life and living is one of time stretched long. My first born took nine months of careful formation before he was ready to be born. He’s pushing 30 now. And he is still being formed into a new person every day. Everything in its time, the psalmist says. Maybe I have to learn to respect process. After all it take God six days to create the universe. And even if those six days are literally six 24 hours days, God did it in six days, not one; 144 hours, not one; God created over time, not in an instant. And maybe that is more the point of the creation story. This is not about how fast God created. This is a wise story that tells us that all creative living takes time. Creative, vibrant living is a process.

I don’t always respect process. When I lived in Boston in the 70’s, the church manse had a big yard for a city house. So, I dug myself my first garden since high school. I planted my radishes, carrots, lettuce, Swiss Chard, tomatoes and zucchini. After the seeds were planted, I read the little packages and they informed me that it would take six days to see the first tinge of green that would become lettuce. Carrots would take 28 days. I’m hungry, now - not later!

That’s when I learned my life lesson about process. Each day, I would visit my sleeping garden to see if there were signs of seeds waking up! After a few days of this boring observation, I decided to see what activity there was under the soil. I dug down carefully around some planted area. Aha – a seed! It was moist and cracked! A little sliver of plant tendril had burst through. I did this again and again. When I told my father in law, the consummate gardener, he told me, “You know, if you keep doing that you won’t have any plants. If you mess with the process, you can kill the plant”.



Life is a process. Each relationship and congregation, a tendril of green bursting into a new future every day, each Sunday, fertilized by worship, preaching and the sacraments. Protected by the plowing, etching, weeding – the cultivation of pastors toiling in the Garden of God. No 0-60 in 4.6 here. No 3 minute miles. Only the tender hand of God carefully forming frail garden clay into people after God’s own image.

Given that, the effective interim pastoral leader will always have some dirt under their nails. I think of the parable that Jesus used to help us understand life with God. God's ways are like seeds. Each seed contains a plant, a fruit, a way that sustains life, within it. Some seeds end up on rocky soil and get burned by the hot sun. Other seeds fall on good soil but are choked out by thorns, thisles and entangling weeds. Yet other seeds of life fall on the tilled, fertile soil of a soul ready to nourish this new life. Here's process. Rocks can be cleared and hardpan clay softened with humus. Thorns, thistles, weeds, are difficult but not impossible. Tough work, this Garden of God we call the Church.

But, what about my soul's soil? I'm thinking that maybe effective interim leadership needs to begin with the process of developing fertile soil in my inner life. Effective leadership will be revealed as the fruit of my inner life. I may be able to lead people in a technical way, but to lead people as a pastoral leader means head and heart, technical and pastoral, must be integrated. And that is a process that means diggin in the dirt - soil - of my own life. Weeds, thorns, rocks, clay - these are in me, too. Prepare my heart, O God.

Digging in God's Garden - a faithful calling - for this is truly Holy Ground.




Copyright, Bob Anderson, April 29, 2004