Posts Tagged ‘fertile’
Posted on November 16, 2008 - by Tim L
God the Gardener
1“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. 2He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. 3You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.
4“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.
5“I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. 6Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. 7But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. 8This is how my Father shows who he is-when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.
John 15: 1-8 (The Message)
I love to garden. Specifically I love to grow fruit and veg. I keep an allotment, I have a greenhouse and couple of patches of ground at home for the summer crops. I love being outside, I love buying the seeds, I love planting and watching them come up. I love digging up potatoes, the smell of fresh carrots, the sweetness of freshly picked peas, a crisp leek, the smell of home grown garlic, a pepper in a Chinese stir fry, lentil, smoky bacon and pumpkin soup.
It is partly a distraction for my days off when I can get away from the house, the phone an d enjoy some peace and quiet. When I can do some physical activity, hard digging, weed pulling, cutting back a hedge.
I try to grow organically as much as I can. I have a whole variety of techniques to try and combat the pests. But there is nothing like sitting down to a meal and count up how many veg have been grown at home or down on the allotment.
God is a gardener - he is in the business of the fruit and veg production. The fruit he longs to see is the fruit of the Holy Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. There is no law against any of those things and lets face it the world needs more of them - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.
If God is a gardener where are you?
Are you a fertile soil? Ready that God might come and plant in you and grow a vine that will bear much fruit.
Are you an established plant but in the bed full of weeds and you are in danger of being choked?
Have you just fruited, produced your first crop of lovely delicious crisps apples?
Are you a full grown tree, you fruit every year but you need some pruning?
God is a gardener.
He looks for soil that he can work with and that can produce fruit. All you need to do is ask him to come and help you bear fruit
Do you feel that you are in danger of going under in a veg patch that looks like it has never seen a gardener for a few years? It might be time to ask God to help you with some of the hard choices you need to make about the priorities in your life, your friends, how you devote your time, ….
If you have begun to produce your first crops - well done. But don’t relax and think you have arrived. God asks you to be more fruitful.
Have you born fruit year after year and consider yourself to have reached maturity. God will want to prune you. There are some things which need to be taken out, cut off so you can bear even more fruit.
If God is a gardener where are you?
Fertile soil
Being choked by the weeds
In need of some pruning
If God is a gardener where are you?
Reflection
If U had a vineyard
Theology Sinead O'Connor
On a fruitful hill
And U fenced it and cleared it
Of all stones until
U planted it
With the choicest of vine
And U even built a tower
And a press to make wine
And U looked that it would bring forth sweet grapes
And it gave only wild grapes
What would U say?
Jerusalem and Judah
U be the judges I pray
Between me and my vineyard
This is what God says
What more could I have done in it
That I did not do in it?
Why when I ask it for sweetness
It brings only bitterness
For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts
Is the house of Israel
And the men of Judah
His pleasant plant
And he looks for justice but beholds oppression
And he hopes for equality but hears a cry
Jerusalem and Judah
This is God’s reply
Sadness will come to those who build house to house
And lay field to field ’til there’s room
For none but U to dwell in the land
Oh in the land
And sadness will come to those who call evil good
And good evil
Who present darkness as light and light as darkness
Who present as sweetness only the things which are bitterness
For the vineyard of The Lord of Hosts
Is the house of Israel
And the men of Judah his pleasant plant
Oh that my eyes were a fountain of tears
That I might weep for my poor people
For every boot stamped with fierceness
For every cloak rolled in blood
Jerusalem and Judah
I’d cry if I could
If I had a vineyard by Sinead O’Connor from Theology, 2007
Final comment
The song by Sinead O’Connor talks about God’s chosen people being vineyard but despite all of the best attentions of a faithful gardener the fruit is sour. You cannot make wine from the fruit of the vineyard. This is not a threat but it is a comment on what God the gardener is like. If you don’t bear sweet grapes for fine wines he will dug you up and root you out of the vineyard.