The Bungee Cord - 5-3-21

Hello,

 

Spring has sprung in western Pennsylvania, and at our house that means gardening.  Nor for me, but for my wife.  She plants three vegetable beds, grows pollinating plants for the butterflies, and tends the various decorative plants around our house.  She is an official “master gardener”, so I guess she has an official green thumb.

 

These past several weeks she has been starting her vegetable plants, and they take their spot in our family room in front of the big picture window facing west.  She tends each one of them with care.  Spraying them with water a couple times a day, rotating them daily so that grow straight, and soon she will set them outside in the shade to get them prepared for their summer in the garden.

 

God is often pictured in the Bible as a gardener, specifically a vineyard owner.  Much like my wife, God is said to be a careful and caring gardener.  Pruning branches, tending the soil, and overseeing the growth of the vines.  Watching my wife tend her fragile plants opens my eyes to a clearer vision of God’s tending of God’s tender plants, especially and including you and me.  Also, you and I are not in the hands of some green-horn gardener, but you and I are in the hands of someone, who like my wife, is not a green-horn gardener, but a certified green thumbed Master Gardener.  God daily showers us with divine love, spins us around when we are starting to lean too far in one direction, and sets us out in the shade of his mercy to prepare us for the heat of our lives.

 

There is something about God that is quite different from my wife’s gardening practices, and that is that God is also known for his rather reckless abandon in the use of the seeds.  Unlike my wife who carefully plants each individual seed in nearly perfect potting soil, God is said to be like a gardener who grabs a handful of seed from his bag, and just tosses all those seeds into the wind, making sure that all the soil is covered in seed….good, bad, rocky, or weedy.  He does this because God has an endless bag of grace to sow in this world.  God does not sow his love as if it were limited or scarce.  God sows his love knowing that his love will never end.  The good news about that is that I can rest assured that God’s love will land on me.  There are times when God’s grace lands on my life and the soil of my life is not good.  I am confused.  I am caught in the world’s cares.  I am hard hearted.  But never the less, God doesn’t stop sowing his grace in my life, giving up on the soil that his seed finds on one day.  Every day, God is back at God’s gardening job, recklessly sowing new seeds of grace and mercy.  And maybe on this day of sowing, my life is more receptive to God’s grace…..maybe God has done some fertilizing and loosing of my life by the love that others have shown me…..maybe I have come to my wit’s end and my heart has softened….maybe the blessing of rain has fallen and the seed takes a better hold.  Unlike my wife, God does not give up on the soil that his seeds fall upon, God keeps on casting grace into every corner of the world….including the soil of my life and the soil of your life.

 

Spring has sprung in western Pennsylvania!  And know this, God is at work in your life springing forth hope, peace, joy, and faith in your life as God recklessly sows the seeds of grace, and carefully and caringly tends the plants.

 

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger