The Gardens of Life

Stewardship is an essential way of life that will determine the future of our bodies, our families, our communities, and our earth. Sadly stewardship has been cheaply assigned to the role of raising money for the operating budget of a church. Or even worse, stewardship means dominating the earth and each other for our own gain. Authentic stewardship is the role and activity that the Creator gave to all human beings for the nurture and care of all, even the smallest of things. Whether we are raising a tomato plant in a pot or farming a thousand acres of wheat we are stewards. The size of the garden does not matter. We are not good stewards if we think we have to have a larger garden to be a trustee. My life has seen many gardens and I have learned that each is meant to prosper. I still believe in vocation, which does not always mean profession. My primary call is to cultivate the gardens of my life that each may flourish. My gardens are like a series of greenhouses arranged like the spokes of a wheel. They have many similarities. They all need sunlight and water. They need protection from insects and disease. Always the question is how do you do that responsibly? Yet each greenhouse is unique and each poses its own challenges. My family is a garden. I am serving two small congregations and each is unique. My work as a hospital chaplain is a prolific garden of hope, skill, disease, and death. Soggy Bottom, where we live, is a garden of vegetables, fruit trees, chickens, horses, and two absurd goats. The primary challenge of the future, for the sustainability of us all, is learning that stewardship means first of all the flourishing of the gardens we have been given. Coincidently these gardens might provide for our families, but stewardship is first focused on how the garden grows. I have faith that if the gardens prosper in our hands we will prosper as well. Prosperity will mean that we have joy in the growing of things, we are at peace with the role of gardener, and we will be thankful for the life that we are given in the garden, however meager or grand. And yes, every garden requires sunlight and water, hoeing and trimming, fertilizing and weeding. Whether it is the local church, the hospital, my family, or my vegetable garden I must consistently water, shovel manure, thin the rows, and figure out how to manage weeds and insects. My suspicion is that these same issues confronted Adam and Eve in paradise long before they got the boot. It was only in the state of self-consciousness and alienation that they decided this was unfair labor on the other side of Eden. May your zucchinis be long and green, your tomatoes vine ripened, you children strengthened, your work abundant, and your hearts be satisfied.