Circle of Hope

In the last two days I’ve developed a new passion for landscaping my backyard.  This is the first time in ten years that I haven’t had a small concrete box for a yard, so I’m getting used to the newness.  In Philadelphia-especially in Kensington, grassy yards are a rare commodity.  Last summer, while our house was being rehabbed-the yard was full of construction debris and refuse.  A layer of topsoil was added on top of the rubbish, and a few clumps of “grass” have been kind of growing.

Last week, Martha and I decided that the children had pulled up enough nails and glass out of the dirt while they played, and we were going to lay down sod.  I wish that all of life could be so simple: stop accepting the illusion that there is not garbage under the surface, clean it out, and then put something new in its place.

What a metaphor!  We are all a mess on the inside, and much of the time we even would try and conceal all the brokenness and bottle caps with topsoil that looked good to most people.  Why?  We like to save face and we think that people will like us better if we don’t look broken.  That’s understandable.  Even some construction companies apparently think that just using some kind of cover-up is a good, cheap option to restoration.

I think that Jesus is actually interested in those plastic bottles that are six inches beneath the surface-too deep for most people to even look.  I think Jesus loves us even through the numerous bricks that are stashed away.  I tend to respect my own bricks, my own debris.  I too often treat them like part of my identity and just the way that I am.  I don’t’ think that Jesus has the same respect for hidden garbage in me.  He wants to clean it up-not because he is some anal retentive neat freak of a LORD, but because he loves me and sees what I don’t always see-a beautifully healthy yard that has no need for secrets, the yard is a place that reeks of restoration and redemption!

So I’m feeling kind of sore this morning after moving a couple hundred pounds of smelly chunks of sod into my van and through my house, into a pile and onto the top up the earth that I tore up.  This morning after I sprayed a small lake’s worth of water on the sod then I sat there and felt a new kind of peace and accomplishment.  This is headed in a great direction.  I wasn’t ignoring the final third of the yard that we didn’t do yet, I was appreciating what God has done!  I think that God even looks at us kind of like that-seeing the good, the potential, and the yet unfinished.  I think we’ve been taught to see our uncompleted thirds (I actually do this quite well), it’s time that we see the good work that God has been doing.  How great must God feel that we would even be going towards redemption!  Too often we seem to drift towards either neglect and collect garbage or towards cheap concealment of the ugliness.  Letting the Great Gardener in is such a good move.  I want to be the new yard.