There’s a wonderful children’s book series by Arnold Lobel, about a frog and a toad, named Frog and Toad, who are friends.

In one of these stories, Toad is inspired by Frog’s beautiful garden to want to start a garden of his own. Frog gives him some flower seeds to start him off. Toad runs home and plants the seeds and stares at the ground and says, “Now seeds, start growing!” Quickly he becomes frustrated that nothing is happening. The more frustrated he becomes the more he yells at the seeds to get growing already.

Toad goes back to his friend Frog and tells him about these troubles. Frog suggests that all the yelling may be frightening the seeds. “Leave them alone,” Frog advises, “Let the sun shine on them, let the rain fall on them. Soon your seeds will start to grow.”

So, Toad returns and waits, but still they haven’t grown. He wonders if maybe the seeds are still afraid to grow, so he sits by them and reads stories to them and plays music to them. He gets tired and falls asleep.

When he wakes up, there are the flowers, with their brave and beautiful heads lifted into the air. The seed had grown.

Jesus said, “God’s realm is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time!” (Mark 4:26-29)

When it comes to our spiritual vitality, when it comes to the growth of our faith and its flourishing, as individuals and as a community, it is helpful to see that this is an organic process, it’s a process of growth that is as natural as a seed sprouting and growing and bearing fruit and sending out seeds to spread out and gestate and sprout more growth.

We can help spread the seeds and help cultivate the right conditions for healthy growth and see when the time is right to harvest and to plant again, but ultimately the growth and spread of the realm of God in our midst happens of its own accord, outside of our understanding. And there is something simply natural and right about.

It doesn’t help to shout at the seeds to get growing. In fact, our frustration, our fretting, our fussing can inhibit the growth of our souls and of the vitality of our community of faith. This feeds only fear, which tends to forestall faith.

Now, faith, trust, patience, these virtues doesn’t mean laziness. It may mean taking more naps. But, we do need to put in some effort to create good conditions for the thriving of our souls and of our faith communities – clearing the thorns, clearing the rocks, enriching the soil, making sure there’s good water; we do need to be savvy and to read the seasons and the terrain, we do need to be willing to experiment, and to be smart about what we learn. But ultimately, the growth of our souls, and of our shared spiritual lives, is not of our own doing. It is by grace we live and by grace we receive renewed life.

It does happen sometimes that suddenly the glory of God breaks on us with a crack of thunder and knocks us off our horse; it can happen in a moment that someone has a “Come to Jesus moment” and does a quick 180 away from what deals death to the soul and toward what gives it life; it does happen that in a flash you wake up; it does happen that the Holy Spirit rushes through a congregation like the wind, and blows down the walls around what we imagined possible, and we are forever changed.

Yet, for most of us, most of the time, the life of the soul is more of a process, a story of gradual growth, of evolution and change that goes on slow and steady, or in fits and starts, mostly unnoticed, under the surface. And in fact, sudden spiritual experiences, or dramatic shifts in one’s relationship with God, or an astonishing renewal in a community of faith often are in fact the blooming of something that has been growing and preparing through a more gradual process.

 It’s important that our focus is on cultivating healthy conditions for ourselves and with others, along with making a practice of the trust and patience to be willing to get out of the way and give space to God.

So, for the sake of our individual spiritual lives, and for our life as a community of faith, it can be very helpful to ask the kinds of questions about creating the conditions for healthy growth that you would ask about other growing things:

First, are you willing to grow, and to change?

What does healthy growth look like?

What are the fruits and the blossoms that you yearn for? What are the fruits and blossoms that that you have enjoyed?

Where does your nourishment come from? What is your food? What is your air?

What do you do with your waste? This is a very important one, we often overlook. What do you do with the things that become poisonous if they build up without being cleansed in a healthy way? How do you let them go without poisoning someone’s drinking water, but rather composting them. This is why Jesus had so much to teach about judgmentalism.

What roots you?

What keeps you in balance?

What helps you stay safe from threats?

What changes in your environment do you need to adapt to?

What have you received from prior generations that serves life and fullness of life? What have you received that no longer serves life and fullness of life?

What does reproduction look like? Every organism and community and ecosystem need to help generate new life and welcome new life in and raise up the next generation and give it what it needs to flourish. What does that look like for our faith community?

Who else lives in our ecosystem? Are those relationships healthy and upbuilding?

What are challenges to any of this both in our collective and individual lives of faith? What gets in the way of what we need to grow, to be nourished, to be safe, to adapt, to share life? The thorns and rocks and the hard ground of Jesus’ parable. How can we address these challenges?

What season is it? Is it a season for planting? For harvesting? For biding our time? For planning? For clearing away?

Where do we cast our seeds? With whom do we share the harvest? Who are our fellow workers?

How do we practice trust and faith, giving space for the realm of God to grow in its natural way, letting go of frustration or anxiety?

I have found that these kinds of questions, organic questions, can be very helpful in guiding how to cultivate a rich and thriving and soulful life of the soul. This can be helpful for questions of “I feel distant from God; my prayer-life feels dead; what can I do?” to “Our church feels stuck and dwindling but we don’t want it to be,” to “Wow! This is so inspiring, the Spirit is on the move, what do we do now?”

To give credit where credit is due, I learned this organic model from church leaders who focus on church vitality, Rev. Courtney Stange-Tregear, and Rev. Cean James, … as well as Jesus, of course, above all, who taught about the realm of heaven on earth by teaching about planting and growing and harvesting.  

Jesus said, “I have come so that they may have life, and have life abundantly.” Life and fullness of life – that’s what our Holy Creator has created us for, and why Jesus gave himself so completely to the world.

The vitality of our souls wants to sprout and grow and flourish. It’s in the nature of the soul, like the nature of lifeforce itself. It’s tenacious and outrageous in its vibrancy. That’s why in all of Jesus’ parables his sowers are throwing seeds all over the place – they’re all lousy reckless farmers who blow past the boundaries of their fields and take the chance of “wasting” a lot of seed throwing into places where no one thought to grow things before. Grace is reckless; it’s indiscriminate. The recklessness of grace is an expression of just how natural it is for the soul to grow, if it just gets a chance.

Jesus said, “I have come so that they may have life, and have life abundantly.” How have you known this? How do you yearn for this? How have you had this shared with you? How have you shared it with others? How can we continue to cultivate the conditions and to practice the trust for the richness of life lived in the realm of our God of universal love to flourish and grow?

Thanks be to God.  

Delivered September 17, 2023 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg

Image by Shepherd Chabata from Pixabay