As with every creative work,
gardens don’t just happen. They are
started with intentionality and insight as to how they will look when fully
grown and well tended. There is a point
where the creator lays out the rows and beds and plantings all with an eye for
how they will look next to each other, complimenting each other, causing the
splendor of the whole creation to be multiplied by the placement of each
individual part. The garden which I
write about today is no different, for it was a creation of a master gardener
who took great care to plant species of trees, flowers, shoots, and vines that
would work well with the flow of the land, the river that ran through the
garden, and the geographical limits of the area itself. This garden was a marvelous sight to behold,
each part working well with its surroundings and a pure delight for all those
who ventured by to see.
As with every creation,
there is a time when it reaches the pinnacle of its growth. A time when everything is going so well that
the creation itself deems the creator unnecessary. Before long- and quite subtly- all types of
invasive things started to grow, and it went unnoticed by the creation that the
master gardener had not been to visit and tend it for quite some time. Thistle, burr, and thorn alike made their way
inside the garden, and even some of the garden’s original plantings outgrew
their beds and started to take over parts of the garden where they had not been
planted, seeking out the soil and resources of the surrounding beds. The once
great garden became no more that a remnant of its former self.
Where there once was a
great division between tended and wild, there was now but a blurred and very
faint distinction. As thistles, thorns,
and burrs do, they choked out the growth of the plantings by dominating the
space and the resources. There was still
beauty in what once had been a marvelous creation, but the wild had snuffed the
majesty right out of it. Until one day when
the master gardener came to visit. He
had not been absent but merely watching from afar because, as with every
creator, he longed to give his creation some space and freedom to grow. But at just the right time, before all was
lost, he entered the scene. His heart
ached for the pain of the plantings, seeing those which had been lost and those
still entangled and entrenched by thorn and burr. He of course had the capacity
to correct what had gone wrong. After
all, he was the master gardener. In fact,
he could have prevented all that had happened from taking place but, like a
father teaching his child to walk, he had to allow the child to fall or the
child would never learn how to get back up.
But now seeing the state of his creation, he reassured each plant and
flower and vine that he would intervene if only they would but ask him. Many did, and he immediately began the tedious
job of pruning the garden back toward its original state. The process wasn’t easy, and it was not
without cost and pain to the plantings, for they were torn, punctured, and
bleeding, but the gardener continued his work until the wild was removed and
the garden was once again marvelous. The
gardener was spending his time not only walking the paths of his garden but
also making new paths into the wild, removing all manner of invasive growth
from any planting that would ask. For it
was now obvious that there was more than just this garden but a whole network of
plantings beds of every type which the master gardener had been tending, each
in its own state of disarray, each needing his loving and consistent hand to
come in, restore, and connect them to his garden until one day, when all would
be covered in the gardener’s creative plantings and marvelous landscapes.
In my experience, much of
the church in western Christianity is like that garden- invaded by all sorts of
maladies. The church has allowed
doctrinal divisions, power struggles, suffocating debt, overbearing leadership,
stylistic preferences, ungodly divisions between clergy and laity and much more
to fracture it in ways that make the majesty of the early church a thing not
often seen. But Jesus, the head of the
church, is within earshot, waiting for his creation to call for help so He can
do the work of helping it return to its earlier productive splendor. He’s not looking for us to return to the good
old days of thirty of forty years back, but he is looking for us, His church,
to stand up and be what we can be: a
true community of Christ-minded people looking to love him deeply and to love
others in the same manner we love ourselves.
God has always used reformation to nudge His church back toward the
purpose for which it was created, and He is marvelously at work doing the same
thing now in a divinely splendid manner and in a variety of ways. This work comes at a cost, for removing the
wild often involves shrinkage, chaos, and short term loss. But reevaluating priorities and realigning
people with God’s plan for His church is well worth the cost. I hope and pray that 2015 will be a year of
returning to the Master Gardener for the western church.
