We are about as far away on the calendar as you can get from planting season, I know. And I'll wager that the harvests from your own garden this year are all far in the rear-view mirror. But I'm going to ask you to try something today that is intentionally out-of-step with the usual rhythm of planting and harvesting: start planning your garden for the year ahead. Even go ahead and start gathering seeds. Do it as a spiritual exercise--as a way of learning what it feels like to live in hope of a coming future.
Most of us who aren't professional farmers have lost (or never had) the skill of living our present-tense lives in light of an unseen future, or of how that calls for both action and patience. But for people whose livelihoods are built around sowing now what will be reaped in time to come, life is constantly pointed in the direction of a day that has not yet dawned. Followers of Jesus could stand to learn that--or to rediscover it.
In a way, that's what this season of Advent does for us: it reminds us that our lives are always oriented (a word which originally meant "pointed toward the direction of the sunrise," appropriately enough) toward God's new day, and God's new creation. We stake our lives on the promise that God is making all things new, and that in the mean-time, we are called to spend our resources (time, money, energy, and love) in light of what will last into that new creation. That sounds to me rather a lot like gathering up seeds and sketching out a plan for a garden bed, even while the winter is just beginning. It is an act of hope to envision tomatoes, cucumbers, and sunflowers precisely at the time when the ground is freezing. It is an act of faithful defiance of death to imagine there will be more to be said after January winds and snows do their worst.
So, go ahead: get out the graph paper. Sketch out a drawing. Check the shed or the discount displays at your home-and-garden store for seeds. Read up on how far apart to space your seeds and do the calculations for how many you'll need. Even start your list of friends you'll bring zucchini to come summertime. Do something, in other words, that requires hope and patience at the same time--remembering, perhaps, that in languages like Spanish, the same verb means both "to hope" and "to wait."
And then notice what happens to you as you start to picture that future. Even in winter, you'll start looking at the ground of your future garden differently. You'll be careful what you dump there, or what messes you leave on that ground. You'll watch where you step. You'll begin to picture what it will be like on some gloriously warm June day to watch sprouts, or what it will smell like to have the scent of fresh tomato leaves impressed on your hands. You'll treat the ground itself like it is special, even if there's nothing in the soil there yet. But you'll know that it is special, even now, even at this moment, in light of what will happen in that patch of earth.
And as you do, you'll also find your patience being stretched and increasing your flexibility, much like stretching the legs in your muscles enables you to run without getting a charley-horse. The more we train our spirits to do things now even if we can't see or feel the "pay-off," the more we teach ourselves that there are things worth doing apart from instant gratification, the more we'll be able to see our day-by-day choices as part of God's Reign. I'm reminded of those lines of Wendell Berry:
"Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years."
That's what it looks like to live now in light of a promised future--even if that future is far down the road. And when we do that--even if it starts in small actions like the gathering of seeds for a springtime garden, it will change us. We'll start seeing all of life differently-- every interaction, every day, every choice, as a chance to act in light of a promised future. We'll see relationships with other people in light of knowing we'll be neighbors in the new creation--and so we'd better find ways to be neighborly to them right now. We'll see acts of generosity toward strangers--the gift tags at the Salvation Army or for local school kids who are in need, or the donation to the homeless ministry in your community--as seeds planted for the sake of their future, even if you never get to see (or receive credit) for the goodness you place into their lives.
In a culture that focuses on immediate pay-offs, instant gratification, and fast profits, you and I can be people who choose to be deliberately out-of-step. We can be ahead of the curve--gathering seeds for a garden we cannot yet see, whose produce we will gather in time as well. And when we take those small, concrete steps, action like seeds themselves, we let God shape our spirits to embody hope that the world needs.
Let it start small. Let it start today.
Lord God, enable us to act now in light of a future we cannot yet see, but which we trust you will bring to fruition. Shape us by your promises.
How coincidental is it that planning to plant seeds is the subject of this devotion, when 2 days ago I came across a tiny bag with 3 sunflower seeds in it, along with the script, "As the Father molds, shapes, and changes us, so He molds and changes the drab seed into a beautiful flower." I had misplaced it after the seeds were given to each member of the congregation in the past, and I remember feeling sad when I heard many of the church family talking about how fast their seeds were growing. I am definitely going to plant them in the spring to see if they are still viable, along with some more current seeds. Thank you, Pastor Steve, for the kick start on planning our gardens.
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