Between the time for pansies and peas a garden waits.

As a child I would help my mother plant annuals in our garden.  I am sure there were other plants in the garden but the only ones I remember are the pansies.  Purple with yellow eyes were my favorite and I loved working side by side with my mom planting, what I believed to be, the prettiest flowers in all of creation.  I would dig to China in that garden long after the planting was finished.  There were few things that pleased me more than getting dirty in that garden. 

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            Once we moved to a new home and I became a teenager there was little time or interest for gardening.  Time passed and soon I had a home of my own.  There was a lumpy mound of flowers and weeds at the side of the house that we walked around, weed whacked and mowed over, never giving it much thought.  In the meantime my grandmother made quick work of setting up my first vegetable garden.  Peas were the first to arrive and I was hooked.  I spent hours in that garden and our children grew side by side digging in the dirt as I once did.  Sweaty little fists gathered the peas and beans that rarely made it to the table.  When our daughter went for preschool screening they asked her what her favorite food was and                                                                                         she replied "chives." 

            I spent many years in that garden until my Multiple Sclerosis caused me to shift gears.  As I adjusted to my new circumstances I began to pay attention to that mound of overgrown flowers.  I soon discovered it was actually a little rock garden if you will; it had been waiting for me for a long time.  About that same time my mother began planting perennials and we discovered that I had struck gold in that little hill!  Sweet primrose, bachelor buttons, dianthus and more, their names were like music to my ears. That little garden could supply a church plant sale with over a hundred pots...yes that is right...break them up just right and they will create a whole new garden.

            A few years ago we moved to a new home full of perennials, and I mean full. I have vegetables mixed in with day lilies, daisies and thyme, and I am still learning how to dance with this garden. 

            Recently I went back to my old garden, easy to do when our son owns the home, and my hands moved in that garden as if it were yesterday.  I made quick work of weeding, thinning and transplanting (it was time to bring some of that garden to our new home).  There was so much that was familiar and yet so much had changed!  There were things that grew that I never gave a chance; being left alone our son gave them opportunity to shine.  My globe thistle never looked so good!  Yet there were things that were choked out and overgrown as well.  I sat in this garden and I was struck by its beauty and reflected on how coming back to it was like coming back to my home church. The beauty rests in the new growth and the reliable sweet scent of the lily of the valley.

            Perennials are the perfect metaphor for church.  We plant and we wait, we learn from other gardeners and use their "shoots" and we wait, we learn to wait a year or more.  Once we have done this a while we learn to trust as we wait.  When spring arrives we are amazed and then we start digging!  We move this and that to here and there.  We learn to prune, understanding that the growth that follows will be stronger. We forgive ourselves the overzealous clipping that takes down a freshly bloomed iris and we learn to begin again.

            Harvest and annuals are gone for the winter and remnants are tossed in a compost pile but perennials are put to rest, to bed, to sleep for the winter with the promise of spring and summer blooms.  After they are tucked in we wait some more.  

            This is often the life of a church: planting, fertilizing, pruning and lots of waiting.

  God calls out to us from the depths of the ground via the tangles of the roots and sings songs of delight as the first signs of green break through the icy snows of spring. “I am here, I am here, I am here.”

            There is a season for it all.

           

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8