![]() ![]() And so we plant seeds of faith and trust. Without the down and dirty work of breaking the ground, without the tilling and planting, there is no harvest. This is about blood and sweat and tears and dirt and money and relationships.Īnd that’s why this work is so critical and important. This is about losing jobs and signing divorce papers. This is about the diagnosis and the uncertainty. This is about therapy appointments and idolatry, about compulsion and Amazon accounts, about insecurities and grudges and conflict with coworkers, about contentment and fear. This is a deep and profound experience of daily engagement. This is not a mere theological concept taught to us in a course about the mechanics of personal salvation from sin. This is not a cheap faith, nor is it a shallow trust. We water, we cultivate, we steward.Įvery day and every moment of this season is an act of faithfulness and trust. What we are asked is to undertake a dynamic journey of problem-solving and strategic thinking. We are not asked to memorize the step-by-step Instruction Manual for Successful Farming. The story shows us that an element of shrewdness will be part of our partnership with God as we work the field He has given us. So, in addition to perseverance, we need to seek and live in wisdom. Time and again we hear the call to persevere in the responsibilities of trust. As we see the tragic consequences of Cain’s insecurities, we recognize the need to be our brother’s keeper. As we see Isaac begin to realize the call of his father to bless the nations, we perceive the need to stay in the land and remain faithful to the mission. ![]() These seasons of planting and harvest require perseverance. Trying not to be consumed by worry, we trust. The measly growth is hardly noticeable from day to day. Will the heat prove too much? Will the soil dry up and become lifeless? Will a great storm destroy our fragile seedlings? There is such a long way to go and it feels as though the progress might not sustain it. There are so many things we could worry about. ![]() And yet there are so many things that could go wrong (and likely will). Weeks later, we see the evidence of faithfulness poking through the earth. For days, it appears nothing is happening yet we water and we watch in trust. Of course, we don’t learn to plant overnight. We plant these seeds and find out they have a special design, bred to work exactly for the environment in which we find ourselves. These seeds of trust are planted in the soil of living hope. These are foundational postures, major shifts in consciousness that alter the way we perceive the world, understand God, and relate to others - our family, our friends, and our enemies. Trust in God’s justice as we forgive and drop the jawbone.īasic and yet inexpressibly significant, these are the ways we cultivate the Kingdom of God. Trust in God’s love as we lay down our harmful desires for self-preservation. Trust in the story as we say enough to our insecurities. What is the seed we plant in order for the Kingdom to grow? We plant trust. In order to be able to offer our lives in that way, we need to be rooted in trust. The idea was to use this first quarter to build a foundation for a life of worship, a life in which we offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God and His great Kingdom project. We called this section “A Time of Planting and Harvest” with the idea of syncing up our experience with the world around us, considering how we are interacting with what God has created. We have now come to the end of the first quarter of our year together. ![]()
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