This summer was so hot. I would go outside and ask myself, “Isn’t New York supposed to be cool in the summertime?” My poor air conditioner faced numerous days where it never cut off and still couldn’t keep up with the heat. The thing that got the worst of it this summer was my yard. It was a sultry day in July when the mercury hit 103 degrees that my lawn finally waved the white flag. I think I actually heard it sigh as it gave up the ghost, turning a crispy brown. However, my lawn wasn’t the only one. Everybody’s lawn in my neighborhood was a loving brown, the color of fried chicken that has spent too much time in the fryer.
Then the rains came and the yards began to come back. Mine didn’t. As lawns all around the neighborhood perked up and emerged from their drought induced slumber, mine stayed asleep. With green all around me, fried chicken brown wasn’t looking all that attractive. So I began to water. Surely a bit more water would brighten things up. It didn’t, unless you count the mushrooms that started growing adding a brown on brown contrast to my yard. To be honest, I was a bit perplexed. I am no gardener but I didn’t think you had to have a horticultural degree to green up the lawn. How hard can growing grass be? Actually, it turns out pretty hard if you live at my house.
Finally, I had someone look at the lawn. Come to find out the problem wasn’t the grass. The problem was the soil. Turns out, it was so compacted that the roots couldn’t dig in sufficiently to support my lawn through the drought. There wasn’t the support below the surface to support growth above the surface.
As I have considered the state of my lawn, now the bane of my neighborhood, I have thought more than once how I have seen what happened to my lawn happen in people’s lives as they follow after Christ. Things are going great. It looks like God is doing awesome things and then the hard times come. The spiritual dry time hits and our soul thirsts for drops of spiritual water. When the rains that water our soul finally come, some lives spring back more vibrant and alive than ever. Others do not. Some stay dry and withered, a spiritual fried chicken brown. What is the difference? Jesus says that the difference lies in the soil. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable about the importance of the soil in which our lives are rooted. According to Jesus, some soils just are not suitable for growth. Some soils are too rocky, others too hard, and some are simply too cluttered to allow for real growth in our lives with Christ.
So what’s the lesson? I think the lesson I am learning is that if I want growth, I have to take time to prepare the soil. God is the one that brings growth but He does it in the soil I have prepared. So how do we prepare the soil in our lives? I think one of the most practical ways is to develop something called a “rule of life.” A rule of life is simply a set of activities or ways of being that you intentionally carry out every day. These activities or ways of being have the sole purpose of making room for God in your life. They are not rules to live by but guidelines for opening up your life to God. Here is my own rule of life. I keep it to principles and review it every day in order to fill it with practices that fit what I am going through in the present moment.
- Slow down and take life at God’s speed, taking what He has for me when He has it for me.
- Pay attention to God each day, all day.
- Memorize and meditate on long passages of Scripture.
- View all of life as formative and useful for God’s purposes.
- Seek safe, accountable relationships.
- Leave all results/outcomes to God as well as all recognition.
What I find is that by seeking to live in ways that honor these principles, I am more open to God, my soil is more ready for Him to bring about real growth. My encouragement would be for you to consider coming up with your own rule of life, something that directs you to open your life daily in intentional ways to God. My advice would be to develop a rule that fits who God made you to be. If you are a detail person then you might have details like, I am going to read my Bible. If you are a generalist like me in these things, then principles work great. Play with your rule, holding loosely to it, allowing it to serve you rather than the other way around. Finally, let me know how it goes and how the daily work of preparing your soil is yielding fruit.
A fellow traveler,
Blake
Spiritual Formation Pastor