2. NURTURING AND GROWING

To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

Nurturing Plants and Nurturing People.

Who doesn’t enjoy watching a plant grow strong and productive?

Who doesn’t feel great pleasure watching a child grow into a healthy, happy adult?

And who doesn’t rejoice when an adult friend develops new skills, reveals unguessed at talents, and soars in confidence?

All can grow. And it’s not just the young!

Plants and People need the same things in order to grow!

Firm roots
Nourishment
Shelter in the early stages
Warmth and lots of light.

Gardeners grow plants/ Christian communities grow people.

A few things to think about:

How can a church help people to develop firm roots?
What teaching, learning, experiences and conversations nourish those who already call themselves Christian and those who don’t?
How can a church provide shelter and sanctuary for those who are uncertain or disillusioned, while also offering challenge, and adventures in faith, to those ready to step forwards?
What would make someone feel a Christian group offered warmth and welcome? And yet was not stultifying?

Things to read and ponder:

The Gospel of Luke Chapter 13 verses 18 and 19.

Jesus said:

“What is the Kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it with? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew to be a tree and the birds came to roost among its branches”.

How might the Kingdom of God be like a seed which grows?

What is the gardener’s role in the process?
And can we see any connections with the way in which we seek to nurture growth in each other?

The Flower by George Herbert

I love George Herbert’s poetry. You will all know him from some of the best hymns we ever sing in church.

His poem “The Flower” is certainly about growth and new possibilities. The poet rejoices that when he thought his heart was “shriveled” he was restored by God’s grace and “now in age I bud again”. He does not know how, he did not earn this “resurrection”, but what joy he finds in renewal!

Which lines in the poem speak to you?
After times of “hard weather” how can we trust that we will “recover greenness?”
Has the pandemic felt like “hard weather”? Are there things we can now do to nurture the green shoots of hope and faith in others who feel they have been through a storm?

From “The Morville Hours” by Katherine Swift

I can’t praise this book highly enough! Its structure echoes the form of a medieval book of hours; it’s a meditation on gardens, landscape, Shropshire history and so much more. The extract I have chosen challenges our ideas that we need to work so hard at our gardens. And does it challenge the idea we have that nurturing people is all down to our constant activity?

Is nurturing sometimes a matter of waiting, trusting and allowing things to happen, when we are not in charge?
Is this what we mean when we talk about the workings of the Holy Spirit?

“Sometimes I think we work too hard at our gardens. About four years into the making of the garden at Morville I was ill for the whole of the spring and summer. Neglected, the garden went its own way. Winter vegetables rocketed skyward and went to seed. Unweeded borders filled with seedlings and burgeoned into riotous growth. I wept to see it.

But then the vegetables metamorphosed into flowers – leeks into glittering purple and silver globes hung with bees, endives into quilled sky-blue asters, salsify onto huge shaggy mauve daisies. The self-sown seedlings revealed themselves as foxgloves, feverfew, poppies blown in from neighbours’ gardens. The columbines crossed and seeded, producing a new generation of starry spurless double flowers like miniature dahlias.

The next year there were cardoons among the pinks; verbena among the seakale; huge grey woolly mulleins promising spires of yellow flowers among the purple artichokes. Colours were mingled with breathtaking verve: golden buttercups among garnet-dark sweet Williams, purple foxgloves with last year’s scorzonera gone to seed. And as the garden grew, and the illness recurred, sometimes wiping out months and whole years at a stroke, this became the pattern of my gardening. Hardly anything was deadheaded. Little weeding was done except for the obvious suspects – bittercress, groundsel, shepherd’s purse. And each spring I was lost in admiration: the plants did it all by themselves. I had learned to stop worrying and trust my garden.”

A Prayer (12th century German manuscript).

Blessed be your feet on the roads and the paths you take. May you travel in the peace of God. May the Holy Spirit preserve you. May God hold you in the safety of his hands. May God turn away all evil and may all you meet be glad to see you. And may God’s love be with you evermore.

Amen.

Two videos connected to our theme which you may enjoy, both very suitable for all ages.

1. I Believe in Springtime .

Music and Words by John Rutter.

A short hymn illustrated with lovely images to cheer and uplift your spirits. Its central message is that we need to hold on to hope, to a belief that through the Holy Spirit we can work towards a better world. As in George Herbert’s poem we can believe in Springtime.

2. How to grow vegetables and herbs on your windowsill

A video from Kew Gardens.

Here’s a chance to try nurturing some little plants and eating the produce. Take photos and we can make a gallery of your successes. It’s a project suitable for non-gardeners and the young.

Creative Commons pictures licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

This page was prepared by Heather Evernden