Watering the plants

They say that the Sunday after Christmas and Easter are considered ‘low Sundays’. If that be the case, then how low is the Monday following Easter? We have just come out of an amazing Lenten Season, culminating in an incredible Maundy Thursday presentation that our church shared with another. And then we kicked off the Easter Season with a sunrise service at Megan’s church and an amazing Resurrection Sunday worship service with my congregation. Needless to say, this Monday following such a powerful day has proven to be a little difficult to get up for. I’ve zoned out several times. I’m easily distracted. I’m not tired, just unsettled. It’s like my mind is saying, “Ok, what’s next?” and my body is saying, “Come back later.” Maybe I’m just excited about baseball starting (good win by the Red Sox last night…come from behind against the Yankees) and the NCAA basketball championship game that the Devils will play in tonight. (A quick side note: I most certainly stood up yesterday on Easter Sunday from the pulpit and said, “How ‘bout them Devils!” God forgive me.) Maybe, maybe not.

So I was sitting in this strange state when I remembered that I did have something constructive that I could do. This past Saturday, a group of my congregants met at the church and did some major gardening and planting in order to make our grounds look better. With near record high temperatures on the way in the next couple of days, all those new plants needed some water in order to survive. As I am watering the azaleas and other flowers, I started thinking about how similar we are to the plant life that I was watering. Those plants are not new. We planted some flowers that were already blooming and the azaleas were already a pretty good size. But, they were new to the ground in which they had been planted around the church. In order to survive, they were going to need some tender care and loving, mainly through the water that was now coming out of the hose that I held in my hand.

On Resurrection Sunday, the first Sunday of the Easter season, churches all across the country were filled, ours included. And all those in attendance, like the plants that we planted on Saturday, were not new creations. Instead, they had some years on them, some growth already, probably a few scars along the way as well. But here’s the thing, God was planting them, all of us, in a new place, giving us another opportunity. That’s the heart of the Resurrection Story, God planting something new into our hearts, each of us being reminded that we are being put into some new ground, so some roots can take hold and some new growth can spring forth. Maybe that’s what it means to be a new creation in Christ Jesus. But, I think we have to remember that like those new plants outside my church, all that was planted on Sunday needs to be watered, cared for, and tended to in some way, both personally and communally. I am not naïve. A lot of the people who came to church on Resurrection Sunday will not be seen again for a while. However, I am hoping that at least some of those plants survive, lasting long enough for the roots to take hold. I guess I, or better yet we, need to get to work doing what we can to provide the needed care for those new plants to make it. And here I was thinking I had some free time on my hands after a busy season. I better turn the water off and get to watering those other new ‘plants’.

Practice Makes Perfect

We’ve all heard it before. Most have even said it at some point or another. Sunday before last, I was at basketball practice with my junior boy’s basketball team. I challenged them with a drill that they had never done before. They had to have a full court scrimmage against each other, but the catch was they could not dribble the ball. We tend to dribble too much, so I wanted them to practice passing the ball a little better. You would have thought I had asked them to do something terribly difficult. They complained and whined like a bunch of little kids. We kept at it, eventually moving to something a little more enjoyable. Fast forward to this past Saturday in our game. We jumped all over our opponent in the first half, sprinting out to a 19-3 lead. They played so well and passed the ball better than they have all season. The crowning moment for me was when one of the biggest complainers about the passing exercise lends forward and says to me, “Coach, I guess that passing drill worked.” Indeed.

Last Wednesday, in choir practice, our director had us singing in a very different and unique way. As a voice major at USC, Craig knows little tricks of the trades that many choir members pass off as silly or ridiculous. He knows what he is doing, but it doesn’t stop some of our members from hemming and hawing about the silly exercises he puts us through. Again, they sounded a bit like a bunch of little kids. The kicker is that when it came time to sing the song we were working on, we pulled it off better than expected. Yet again, practice, no matter how awkward and different, truly paid off.

I wonder how it this relates to our lives as Christians. John Wesley believed that we all are working towards Christian Perfection. While we often fall very short of that goal, the point is that we are always supposed to be improving ourselves as faithful disciples of Christ. And, based on the previous two scenarios of life, it means that we should be practicing, and not just going through the same routines and motions. Instead, we should be challenging ourselves, doing things that are often times uncomfortable and not natural for us. I wonder what that would look like. Lent is coming up in a month and what a better time to put ourselves in situations that make us uncomfortable and to practice our faith in a different and unique way. After all, practice makes perfect.