In a timely act of kindness, my mother took my kids today for some special time with Grandma and Grandpa, which left me with an unexpected block of time to use however I wanted. Although I contemplated a 5-hour nap, I decided what I wanted most out of my child-free day was to check off a number of those little tasks on my To Do List that had overstayed their welcome by several days, weeks or even months.
You know the kind of thing I’m talking about: those easy-to-put-off tasks like changing the battery in the clock that stopped working who-knows-how-long-ago, putting away the stray Christmas item left behind in the post-Epiphany decoration rapture, or shredding the pile of papers that have been accumulating for the last 6 weeks months. These were tasks that I knew would only take a few minutes each, but somehow kept getting pushed forward indefinitely to the list for “tomorrow.”
Top on my Just-Get-It-DONE list for today was “re-pot plants,” which sounds a lot less urgent than it actually was. What it should have said was “put the plants IN pots.” As in, these two innocent plants had been living in mason jars of ONLY WATER on my kitchen window sill for the last 3 months. (At least. I lost track.) Even my preschooler knows that plants need air, sunlight, and soil to survive, and here I was actively withholding one of these three basic needs for no reason, other than the fact that my plants aren’t able to cry out for food like the rest of the humans and animals in this house. Clearly, no one has ever accused me of having a green thumb.
And YET, here they were, these two little plants, using the light and water they had, and their God-given DNA, to keep on keeping-on, every day. Despite my neglect, despite tiny Basil Plant being munched on every day by the cat, despite the the winter chill that was coming through the window, they survived.
I found so much encouragement and hope in that thought today. Plants are resilient. They grow in rocky soil and in no soil. They re-emerge after forest fires and nuclear explosions. Plants are fighters. And so are Humans. Even when the world in cruel and unfair, when society is structured in a way that denies people the basic things they need and the rights they deserve, it is possible (though not inevitable) to survive. We are stronger than we think, more hearty than we imagine.
But I believe we are made for so much more than survival. I believe in a God who wants every person to experience wholeness that comes from re-creation, and redemption born out of love and grace. I believe in a God who calls us to reality based on abundance, not scarcity. A reality where we make choices out of empathy, not fear. An upside down Kingdom where the last are first and the most energy goes toward caring for the “least of these,” not into catering to the rich and powerful.
I believe in a Faith that compels us to use our voices to cry out on behalf of those who are voiceless, who are being neglected, who are vulnerable or overlooked. A faith that calls us not only use our eyes to see the needs around us and our voices to cry out, “Hey, we need some soil over here!” I believe that living into the reality of a grace-filled Kingdom means we must also use our hands to dig into the ground, getting dirt under our nails, and then we use our feet to bring the nutrient-rich soil to the people and places that need it most.
My plants survived my neglect, but when I turned my apathy into empathy it made growth possible. That’s the kind of home I want to live in–a place where ever person (and even plant!) is unburdened by the weight of mere survival, and is then free to grow into who they were created to be. That’s the kind of community and society I want to live in, too. Most importantly, I believe that is exactly the type of Kingdom that God invites us into every day.
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