Dear Edwards Church Community,
May is the month in which I become most fully convinced that spring has arrived. The first flowers of early spring are past or passing, trees are budding out into leaves and flowering bushes are reaching full bloom. Graduation weather. A passage of time.
May is also the month in which I am most reminded of the impermanence – and therefore the preciousness – of this life. The delicacy of petals. The ease with which a hard spring shower can strip a flowering cherry tree. The passage of time accelerates.
This is the easiest time of year for me to accept my own mortality, because the indications that this life may not be all there is are front and center. As I turn over a shovel of top soil, I see generations of past growth that became soil and it gives me a strange comfort. I think of the gardeners who raked out stones, pulled weeds and coaxed life out of the dirt with nothing but seeds, water, the turning of the planet, and the care they spread over their gardens. All becomes soil for new growth with the passage of time.
In May I know there will be Hadley grass – all you can eat – and plans for summer vacations laid out like rows in the garden. As I set tomato plants in loose soil or tie up string for beans, I say a prayer for the right combination of sun and rain. “Dear God, bless all our gardens with the conditions we need for growth, and bless us with time to savor the harvest before we need to start all over.” The passage of time accelerates.
May is the month in which I sense once more how deeply embedded in nature we all are, and how much of revelation is repeated in the cycle of the seasons. God breathed life into all of it – you, me, the flora and fauna in every form – and places us in a privileged position. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God …. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands ….” Psalm 8:3-6
We have been given care of the earth, and more. We have been given the opportunity to appreciate our place within the larger process of creation and to make appropriate choices. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Mark 8:35
When Jesus says “lose their life” in the gospel, I hear in our present day context “spend their life.” Our lives in this garden of a world are limited by time, but that does not limit what we can do in terms of meaning. The more of our time, energy and other resources we devote to more lasting causes, the more meaning we can harvest.
As the middle of spring unfolds into another summer a month from now, as your gardens and summer plans take shape, please take time to choose a couple things that spread the Word. “Preach the gospel without ceasing. When necessary, use words.”
Blessings,
Michael
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