April 25th, 2007
…My wife has it. Literally. She is sneezing, snorting and wheezing along with many in our good state who also suffer from allergies. She also has the baseball kind of spring fever. Now that baseball season has returned Amy has commandeered the remote control whenever the Braves are televised.
Last week I began having symptoms of spring fever. It started when I glanced at the many empty flower pots around our house. I realized that it was time to go by the nursery and purchase geraniums, ferns, and perhaps even a few tomato plants.
While I love where we live, I miss not having a suitable lot for a vegetable garden. In years past I would plant more tomatoes, peppers, and cucumber than I could ever possible eat. There is just something satisfying about watching something grow and bloom. I just finished an autobiography by Nelson Mandela and he shared that while he was a prisoner in South Africa gardening kept him centered and fulfilled even though he was surrounded by reminders of oppression.
To be in God’s community, like gardening, is about cultivating one’s life; enriching the soul. Albert Camus writes: “If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life.” Mirabel Osler compares the soul to a garden and observes, “[with a garden] there is no ‘The End’ to be written…but a garden is always on the move.”
As we find ourselves invested in the spring, making plans for the summer and even looking ahead to the next year, may we enter each day ready for the intentional labor of “soul-work.”
It is an honor to join with you in this holy labor through our community of faith.
Grace and peace,
Greg
April 25th, 2007
I do. It is coming from the back of my car. It all started with a weed-eater, actually a weed-eater that was out of gas. I drove to the gas station and filled up my gas can for the appointed task of tidying up my yard. All was fine and ordinary and such until I pulled out in traffic and my gas can tipped over sideways. The can was riding happily in the back and so by the time I pulled my car over, lifted the hatch, enough gas had sloshed onto the floorboard to power my weed-eater for a week.
It is at times like these that I need to come to grips with the fact that my MINI Cooper is not a pick-up truck. Be that as it may, my car has a rather strong odor of gasoline. I have left my windows down and the trunk open. I have scrubbed over and over again the floorboard carpets. All of my efforts have come to no avail. Alas, my poor car smells like a mechanic’s garage. There are just some smells you have to wait out.
In an odd way this has reminded me of a saying my grandmother had: “If you hang around garbage you are going to smell like trash.” As the matriarch of the DeLoach clan this was her way of cautioning us to be careful with the company we keep.
This is of course good advice for all ages, but with all due respect it is not entirely true. The believing community is also called to leave the safe and sanitary confines of insulation and go into a world that is messy and fallen. With Christ as our model we engage people where they are: the downtrodden and the ostracized; the searching and the fleeing; the pious and the profane.
The missional mandate of the church is not to invite others to first get cleaned up, but for us to go and roll our sleeves up and work, visit, feed, clothe and love. Yes, it is messy, smelly work, but it is authentic work.
The tragedies in Virginia, the hardships in Darfur, and the desperation in the Middle East call on us to leave behind our shelters of security and enter into a world that God loves and Christ has died for. Only then can we begin to realize that Christ really has come to cleanse us, thoroughly, completely and eternally.
Peace,
Greg
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:1-2, NSRV)
April 10th, 2007
Last week I joined my family for a bit of Spring Break vacation. There are a few essentials I pack for vacation: at least one pair of shorts; one Hawaiian shirt; one pair of Birkenstocks; and a stack of books. Really there is not much else one needs when taking a few days off.
I did have to drive back to Augusta for a funeral but returned later that afternoon. It was there that I “unpacked” my watch. That is, I took my watch off to ignore for the remainder of the week. I love my watch, but I have no need of it when there are no schedules to observe, meetings to attend or appointments to keep. Perhaps you remember my watch? It was the one I bought in New York City for $38, which of course is a deal because anywhere else it is valued at $38,000 (I was told by the street vendor that it is a genuine Patek Philippe and the guy looked sincere so surely it is the truth, right?).
My watch is self-winding and so when it is not worn it will eventually stop. I was amused when I glanced at my watch on the nightstand later that week and discovered it stopped keeping time a few days earlier. It reminded me these lines from a Jimmy Buffett song:
I bought a cheap watch from a crazy man
Floating down canal
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands
It always just says “now”
Now you may be thinking that I was had
But this watch is never wrong
And if I have trouble the warranty said
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
We all need those spaces and places where we are not ruled by our schedules or defined by our productivity. Is it any wonder that when God completed six days of work He declared a Sabbath for the seventh? I hope that in the course of your week you find the time to take your watch off, rest, and know that your value is not in what you do, but who you are – a child of God.
Peace be in you and near you,
Greg