Last week at our area staff team meeting we studied Jeremiah page 1. We talked a lot about Jeremiah’s appointment by God, to go, speak, pluck up, pull down, destroy, overthrow, build, and plant. Four of these are negative actions, and only the last two are positive. Usually we spend so much of our time in ministry just wanting to build and plant, which if we think about it, really is like wanting to construct a building on whatever happens to be there: a sinkhole, a road, a sidewalk, a dilapidated slumlord apartment. It’s not a good idea. Or it’s like starting to plant a garden as is, regardless of the soil condition, the drainage, the weeds that are still deeply rooted, the children from next door who like running through that particular bit of ground. It’s not a good idea.
I resonate particularly with the planting imagery because of my green-thumb efforts this summer in our newly purchased city home. I planted quickly, and our backyard transformed from a weed pit into a lush garden, yet several times a week I need to carefully pull out weeds, trying to uproot as completely as possible, but never quite fully. And in front of our house, in the midst of all the concrete and pavement is a small cutout for what was a garden. Again, I planted quickly, not anticipating the number of things that would fall into this garden (marbles, balls, bicycles, children, candy wrappers, empty bags of chips) not to mention the usual weeds growing up.
So as much as I wanted to just partake in the positive activity of planting, this accounts for a very small portion of my gardening time. Far more time is spent plucking up, pulling down, destroying, overthrowing. In the garden this centers around deeply rooted weeds, and in the city this includes ubiquitous bits of trash.
And I wonder, what does this look like campus, and in our ministry efforts? What are the deeply rooted weeds of campus culture and our ministry habits? What are the ubiquitous bits of trash that flutter around campus and in our ministry?
As we welcome a new wave of students to our campuses , these are critical questions.
What is God calling us to?
Like Jeremiah, let us be aware of our lack of qualifications, and simply trust that God is with us to deliver.
