Look Beyond the Garden Walls

I am a perfectionist when it comes to folding clothes. I don't have one of those flip-boards that gets my shirts wrinkle-free and exactly square, but I use my arms much the same way so that when my disorganized pile of laundry is completed, there stands an awe-worthy stack of perfectly folded shirts with all angles precisely where they need to be and not a seam out of place. 

Many of you know my life is just a leeeetle busy, between my teaching work, completing my masters degree, and of course, wedging in motherhood somewhere in the mix. I had tried for a while to keep up the novelist part of my life as well, but eventually realized I would have to let that go at least until after my graduate work was completed. So... my children have increased their laundry-folding responsibilities.  

And I've had to let go of my pristine expectations. I don't have any great love of folding shirts and jeans, but I do enjoy the finished product, the beauty of a job well-done. So when my children are less perfectionistic about the appearance of the stacks of clothes, I admit, it's difficult for me keep a hands' off approach. Sometimes, I have to turn away and shut my eyes. And I may or may not be guilty of quickly refolding some of the more unwieldy attempts when my children aren't watching carefully.

Our methods are certainly different. My girls may not gather the sleeves together and match the shoulder seams exactly, but their shirts are just as folded as my shirts. My son might not line up the fronts of the jeans' waist-bands with the backs, but the jeans somehow end up semi-folded. Time and experience will smooth out the flaws, but my children have accomplished their jobs.

It's an important concept I too easily forget: The job gets done when we work together, even when our methods are different.

I left yesterday's blog post with Jesus' words to the Samaritan woman ringing in the air: "I Who speak to you am He." Jesus has declared His divinity, His authority, and Himself as the fulfillment of prophecy. He has built his case, and He delivers the mic drop. 

Now we get the next part of the story in John 4:27-38.

At this auspicious moment, the moment where Jesus claims His identity as the Messiah, the Christ, the disciples come back. They've been up in Sychar at the nearest drive-through for their burgers and fries, and are returning to the well where they'd left Jesus. They'd thought they were hungry before. Now the delicious smells of their newly-purchased food ekes from their packages, and they can't wait to dig in. They come within sight of the well... and stop short in surprise. Jesus is still there where they left him...

But there's someone with him. It's a woman, and they're conversing.

In this culture and time period, this is highly unusual. Not only because of the sex difference, although women were, sadly, given a lower status in society than men. 

Religious leaders just don't spend a lot of time talking with women, and especially, they don't spend a lot of time talking with women alone. Even more especially, religious leaders don't spend a lot of time talking with women, alone, who are of shady moral integrity. Integrity, for religious leaders, and reputation are essential in this line of work, in order to maintain a spotless witness. Jesus has already established Himself as a religious leader; He is called Rabbi (a religious teacher). 

No wonder the disciples are surprised. 

The woman sees the disciples coming and realizes that there is a next step to be taken. She has heard this man declare Himself the Messiah. She has transitioned from questioning to belief. Now she puts feet to her new faith and immediately leaves her water jar there at the well and runs back toward the town to tell all: "Come! See a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Christ?" She becomes one of the first missionaries.

The disciples shrug off Jesus' conversation with a woman. Their Rabbi is becoming known for His unorthodox methods. They pull out the food, divvy up the burgers, makes sure Peter has his chocolate milkshake, and they dig in. The sound of masticating jaws fills the silence. Andrew notices Jesus hasn't reached for the food.

"Rabbi," he says, "eat something."

Jesus shakes His head. Surely He is hungry, but He's getting ready to make another point. This Man is all about the points. "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

The mastication abruptly stops. Gazes go from food to Jesus, food to Jesus, food to Jesus. John swallows, and he nudges his brother James. "Could someone have brought Him food?"

Here, we have three stories in a row of this same type of misunderstanding, this same type of looking at the small picture when the big picture should be so very obvious:

Jesus says: "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again," and Nicodemus exclaims: "Surely [a man] cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born."

Jesus says: "Indeed, the water I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life," and the Samaritan woman exclaims: "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." 

Jesus says: "I have food to eat that you know nothing about," and his disciples exclaim: "Could someone have brought him food?"

I imagine a few heavenly eye-rolls. Maybe Jesus is thinking: Come on, y'all, get there just a little faster.

Then Jesus says something really interesting, and it's something that I think -- in our own small perspectives -- we often lose sight of. "My food," says Jesus, "is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work."

He's taken over the laundry. He's folding the shirts now and placing them on the pile, granted, with a lot more precision and finesse than my children. He's finishing the task. He's completing what has already been started, because that's what needs to be done.

Jesus uses another metaphor, one with which his disciples should be familiar in a society that relies heavily on agriculture. "Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest?' I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest!"

"Four months more and then the harvest" gives the idea that to every season, there is a cycle of sowing, watering, growing... waiting before the reaping. But Jesus is pointing out an essential part of the bigger picture: There are fields outside of our own gardens. There are fields that are already ripe for the harvest. Someone else has already been hard at work. The farmer in the next field over has sowed his crop earlier, and the harvesters need to get in there and finish the work he's begun. 

Stop focusing on the confining limits of your backyard garden! Look beyond your garden walls; there's work to be done everywhere.

"Even now the reaper draws his wages; even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together."

Don't sit on your hands and wait for the seeds you sowed to grow to fruition. Open your eyes! Look at the plants already waiting, the full grain-heads, the stalks bowed over with the weight of produce. Get out there, and get busy!

"Thus the saying: 'One sows and another reaps' is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

Throughout Scripture, this metaphor of planting and harvesting is used many times over, and no wonder, because it's spot on. A seed must die and shed its husk in the soil in order to sprout new life. It's resurrection in the truest sense: death -- to life, abundant life, as each plant produces far more than what is there in the first place. The process of sowing and reaping is the biggest and best illustration of the entire story of salvation and growth in Christ that there is.

And we are all called to take part in this responsibility. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:6: "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow." Paul doesn't claim ownership over the whole planting process, and neither does Apollos. God uses both men to accomplish the harvest.

"God made it grow." Sometimes it's discouraging work. We plant our seeds, we watch our garden, we tend it carefully, but you know, beyond the tending, there is not a single, solitary thing we can do to actually make those plants happen. We have nothing to do with getting the seed to sprout its roots or push up through the soil. That is entirely up to God. 

It's sometimes frustrating to take such a hands-off approach. I want to get in there and stretch out that stem and make it come to the surface faster. I want to tug at the roots until they're long enough and pack them firmly into the dirt. 

But I can't. It's entirely up to God to do the work of growing. Isaiah 55:10-11 says: "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My word that goes out from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Over the last few weeks in my prayer times, the Lord has clearly shown me my hands: clenched fists and white-knuckles around something that I am not letting go. Searching my heart, I believe it's this: I want so badly to grow my plants, to oversee the whole process of sowing to harvest, that I'm focusing only on the seeds I've put in the ground... and have lost sight of the ready and waiting plants already out there, that are already grown, that are already awaiting the harvesters.

"Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest!"

Oh, Lord, let us not focus so intently on our own work, our own vision, that we miss the opportunity to finish the work, the vision, that You have begun elsewhere. Once again, Jesus, I ask that You help us to step back from being so homed in on the minutiae and to focus on the grand panorama, the world-wide picture You are spreading before us. 

Help us to be faithful, to follow the pathway You have put in front of us. 

The pile of laundry waiting to be folded is only halfway depleted, and somebody's got to get those shirts back in the drawers.