So far the article I was reading to see what could be wrong in the garden…

I loved the surprising moment hitting of these profound words and I hope you have the same little smile on the right (or left) corner of your mouth as I noticed myself reading this revealing article. It goes on about the how and the why and the when of the problem of growing fruit in due season but… it helped me to get back (and deeper) to the Culture and Climate problem I have been addressing for the past few posts.

Let me say first that I am not, and please hear the out loud NOT, just speaking to an audience (distant from myself), addressing “church” issues! No, I am addressing and even finding answers to my own situation, my everyday around me issues in order to get hold on the things that seems have been there forever. We sing, talk and proclaim NEW almost everyday, we long for the NEW, the fresh, the fruitful and yet we still experience the things that grew from an atmosphere into a culture. The situation that mindsets (unwillingly) became a voice in the arguments and causes you to get so disappointed that you don’t even dare to touch the theme again. You find yourself avoiding subjects, creating answers that makes you craftily sailing around the cliffs.

A garden has a culture of its own and it is the climate that creates it. The wind, the rain, the humidity, the shadow and sun, the position, all issues that define a climate and with it, the garden “works” with it in it’s culture. Families can be or, let’s be honest, are like that. But what works for a garden is not meant to be for a social structure. Yes, there influences that define the nature of a social community, but other than “gardens” we are called to be in control, to subdue since the human “culture” is as much under the influence of The Fall as the gardens we create. Mainly the reason why Jesus was addressing those issues was, because of the fact that they limited the people to see and enter the Kingdom way, the “Culture of God”.

We are not supposed to create or maintain our own culture but to reflect the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven, which is by definition in contrast to the manmade rules and regulations.

This one confronting sentence at the end of the article made me so sad: If your seeds germinate and then the young seedlings wilt and die, the problem is likely to be… and they confront me with the responsibility of not dealing with the wrong culture before “trusting” the seeds to the soil.

“The young seedlings wilt and die!” 
Wilt- plant, leaf of flower: become limp through heat, loss of water, or disease; droop.• person: lose energy, vigour, or confidence 

Most of the time we understand that we must be willing to change the garden culture because we get frustrated of the fact that our costly investments do not pay off, but when it is about the costly Seeds of the Word, invested through Death and Cross and Forsakenness, we are so ignorant and even unfaithful as Jesus would address it.

For the parents, the teachers, the (youth)pastors, let there not be the blame that we are ignorant of the Word and so, irresponsible with the Seed!

For the Sake of the New, let’s not spare the soil, the culture we created but ask the Lord what it would take to create a New Environment that will hold and multiply the Seed into the Fruits we have been praying for so strongly!

After all, what do we have to loose in a dying world!