Trinity United Church of Christ Lenten Devotional March 27, 2015 "Patience"

"But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience."    Romans 8:25

 by Kevan Franklin

After a long, cold winter, most of us are looking forward to being outside.  Many of our members are avid gardeners. Here's to our gardener's and the great people at Trinity who watch over our flowerbeds!

 

I heard once that there is a Golden Rule of Gardening;  When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.  I really don't like to weed.  When I was in High School, my parents made me weed the garden before I could play baseball.  In addition, I was never a good judge between weeds and plants.

 

Howard Thielbar was one of the great spiritual saints in the church I served in Springfield, Illinois.  Into his late Nineties, Howard still carried gardening tools around in the trunk of his car, just in case he was near enough to stop by the church to touch things up.  First Congregational had a gift for growing very tall, unsightly weeds on the North side of the building. They were at least 7 foot tall with sharp thorns up and down the stalk.  Not the kind of thing you want people to see when they drive by your church.  And they grew fast!

 

One day, Howard asked me to help him run a hose from the church to the area where they were growing up the side of the building  to the second story windows.  He turned the water on and watered those weeds for at least ten minutes.  He said,  "OK.  We're done. Turn off the water"   I said, "So...You came to water our weeds?"  He replied, "No.  I'll be back tomorrow and we can slide those weeds right out of the ground. The water will loosen the roots in about a day."   Howard knew what he was doing.  In life, as in gardening, we like to have immediate results, but sometimes, it's better to be patient and do it the right way.

 

Patience and knowledge go a long way.  It's especially helpful to have Howard Thielbar in the church because of his gift of knowing what to do.   Just like so many other things in life, if we had ripped those plants out of the ground, they would have broken off and almost overnight grown up again.  By giving them time, the roots came out with the stalk. 

 Patience is a great gift of the Spirit because good things take time!

Lent Check;

Why are weeds so hearty and flowers so fragile?

Why is it so easy to gain weight and so hard to lose it?

When have you been so impatient for progress that you took a shortcut that backfired?

 

Prayer;  God of field and garden,  what an amazing world you give us to live and learn in.  Help us to learn lessons about life this Spring as we tend your earth. Grant us patience and wisdom to tend your garden well.  Thank you for wise saints who show us the way.  Amen.