August 3, 2021

Why Do Our Plants Keep Dying?

Strange summer, this! (Said with a British accent.) We did the usual spring planting thing. We filled almost every available garden pot with herbs or flowers. And fed. And watered. And waited.

Everything was going just fine. Every potted thing emerged, and looked healthy while doing so. But then, and early by our Alaskan summer standards, pretty much everything decided to die. DOA. No resuscitation efforts worked. Not a one.

Maybe I didn't do enough of something. More likely, I did too much of something. In any respect, my efforts failed.

While perhaps being guilty of armchair philosophizing, it has me wondering, "Why does everything have to go so bad"? And it's not just limited to my mundane little now dead green sprouts.

Our church includes a dear sister in the hospital bravely fighting against a harsh disease. We have a baby boy in NICU. I have a long- time friend and mentor who died of Covid-related illness just a week ago.

Yesterday, I took a walk with another pastor friend in town. I heard how his marriage has blown up, and he is unsure of what his next steps should be. I also was made aware of pastor friends in Denver who just learned over the weekend that their 17 year old son has leukemia.

And why have so many of our friends moved away?

What is going on? Why does everything seem so dysfunctional? Why is our world so very broken?

(I think I know the answer to that last question.) Our world is broken because sin broke it. All the way back in Geneses chapter 3, we learn how our first parents, Adam and Eve, rebelled and disobeyed God. Their relationship with Him was thus broken.

We, that would be all of us, inherited that propensity to sin. We're all quite good at it. And no one had to teach us how. We were each born with the capacity, even the inclination to rebel and disobey. We prove it every day.

And that first sin of our original parents, and our subsequent sins were not limited in affect to just them and us. It affected all of Creation. The world is broken, because the people who have lived and now live in it are broken.

But judgment for sin, and resultant brokenness are not the inevitable result for all. God promises that, one day, the world will be repaired. Better, the world will be remade.

And the people who love Him, because He first loved them; those who have admitted their brokenness and gladly received His grace through Jesus, will be His new reconstituted people, in a new reconstituted world. Forever.

Rebellion will one day be replaced with adoration. And we will finally be free of our prior broken inclinations.

The ancient Christians used to include something at the end of their prayers, personal or corporate. I find myself doing the same thing more often these days. They looked at some of the final words in all of the Bible. Believed it. And prayed it.

"Come, Lord Jesus!"

Honestly, I'm not emotionally damaged by my now dead plants. But I remain discouraged over the state of our world, and the hearts of its inhabitants. And I know nothing will change until He comes.

But I do have hope. Gospel hope that rests not on what I think I can do, but on what Jesus has already done. And I believe. He will come back to make all things new.

And then, even the plants I plant will live past July.