FRIENDSHIP - with God, with each other, and with all creation

Gardening of Soil

Each child had a Tiny Greenhouse
to sprout some bean seeds

Well, it's happening! And it is so encouraging to see.

Tiny seeds, planted by tiny hands, are sprouting into more than just a tiny bit of hope.

Camden Sparkes helping children
plant their bean sprouts to grow their
bean teepee

It began last week in each child's Tiny Greenhouse. A bean seed, wrapped in a wet towel, sealed in a zip lock bag and taped to the sun-bathed gym window, produced the green miracle of life in barely a week. 

Carmen Green, Eden Kids Garden
Club co-director with two helpers,
David Yarbrough and Roger Hudson

This Tuesday the  children planted their sprouting beans around a wigwam trellis, dreaming of a food-producing, shelter-from-the-sun (a bean teepee) they'll be able to step inside. 


Our hope is that one day soon, in being able to enter their bean teepees, the children will feel themselves wrapped in the green love and care of the Creator. We'd love them to learn about God as the Creator who wants all children to have food and shelter, and who has made the earth to do exactly that - provide food and shelter for everyone. That is, if we learn to live as "FRIENDS - with God, with each other, and with all creation."*

Gardening of Soul - Acts of Compassion

Compassion. 

Once again, in engaging in an act of compassion as part of my witness to Jesus Christ, it was I who received. 

Joining Tom Latimer and Nancy
 Morlock at Shalom Ministries

Yes! In giving, I received.

Carla and I were invited by Ted and Diane Ketchum to join the Covenant Shalom Team this past Monday evening at Shalom Ministry located at New Community Church in downtown Spokane. Broken and scarred, poor and lonely, hungry in body and soul, they came. And in adding salad to their plates as almost everyone offered their "please" and "thank you" for those few hours, I was reminded in real time what it means to do as Jesus did - live compassionately towards all people, unconditionally, no strings attached.

Carla and I both left as better people, better Christians, having learned again how to live as FRIENDS (with God, with each other, and with all creation).
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* Consider taking Bible 101 as part of the Covenant Community Classroom course offerings. The course uses the book Manna and Mercy, "a 100-page hand-printed paraphrase of the bible, from Genesis to Revelation - a graphic novel of sorts, written with imagination, clarity, humor and cartoons. Built around the twin themes of food sharing and forgiveness, it helps us to look at scripture with new eyes and rediscover how it can become a means of life and grace rather than destruction and death."

The Kin(g)dom of God. Our Best Kept Secret.

 The kingdom of God, from the text book for Covenant's
Bible 101 course, "Manna and Mercy," which is a survey
of the whole bible 

The kingdom of God, the Christian church's "best kept secret."

Sobering to think that way about God's reign, or, the kin(g)dom of God. But I think, unfortunately, it's true. We don't seem to make much of it never mind demonstrate its' reality to the world.

Well, Covenant Methodist wants to change that. We want the secret known! By the whole neighborhood. By the whole world!

And that's just what we'll be doing this Tuesday when the Eden Kids Garden Club meets for the first time during our Summer program. Fifty pre-registered children will be learning this "secret" that Jesus wants everyone to know about - how to live as "FRIENDS - with God, each other, and with all creation."

And they'll begin with seeds. Planting seeds in their own little plots within Eden Community Garden will expose them to the marvel of LIFE. They'll learn that watered seeds grow to produce carrots and climbing beans, food to make us strong and healthy because God wants us to enjoy life. And they will begin to experience the love of the Creator who made creation to work so beautifully, perfect in every way, when we learn to live as FRIENDS, with God, with each other and with all creation (ladybugs, chickens, worms too).

The Jerusalem Cross Garden at Leavenworth
United Methodist Church, WA

Slowly Eden is emerging at my home too, helping me too to live as a FRIEND with God, others and all creation. The Jerusalem cross raised-bed will remind me, as it yields food to nourish my body, of the other food, as important, that nourishes my soul - the acts of devotion, worship, compassion and justice. Doing these keep me nurturing my relationship with the God of love (prayer and worship) and, like Jesus, behaving lovingly in the world (compassion, justice).

Don't you feel it? God really does want to bring Eden back to our zip code. Then to God's zip code which is all the earth. And God wants to do it with and through us. Amazing!

Won't you join us?

The text this Sunday: Mark 4: 26-34
"The kingdom of God is as if...," and, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God,..."

Sunday's Reading     Mark 3:20-35

I'm building a Jerusalem Cross raised-bed at home, the fourth such bed I've been a part of constructing. My prayer is that it will help me personally do some "gardening... of soil and soul" each day so that I can wake up every morning to a life of "FRIENDSHIP - with God, with other people, and with all creation" (Daniel Erlander).

Sure, once the Jerusalem Cross raised-bed is build and planted, I'll harvest healthy, organic veggies on which to feast and thrive. But this raised bed, in the shape of a Jerusalem cross, will remind me that the Master Gardener, God, wants to feed my soul too through a life not only of faith, but of action as well.

The Jerusalem Cross symbol, so tarnished historically by the Christian Church's failure to understand and live Jesus' message, reminds us Wesleyan Christians that one of the four acts we're to do regularly is the act of compassion.

Jesus in the Gospel reading this Sunday does multiple acts of compassion by healing many people. And the "Sunday School teachers," as Clarence Jordan, the writer of The Cotton Patch Gospel call the scribes (read "religious authorities"), in response spread a rumor that Jesus was able to do this because "he had an unclean spirit" (Mark 3:30).

What? Jesus? An unclean spirit? What gives?

Eugene Peterson records Jesus' sobering response this way.  “... if you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, ..." (Mark 3:29).

The implication here is the last thing we want to do is separate ourselves from being in relationship with the One in whom we find fullness of life by resisting, if not opposing, the good the Spirit is doing in and through Jesus.

The acts of compassion Jesus did are sure signs that Jesus was of God. How important it is today for us not only to do acts of compassion regularly, but also to recognizes in the acts of compassion by others the Spirit at work building the kin(g)dom.