October 2020
Imagine that a well-known garden expert decides to pay a
visit to Holme and Burton. Whose garden
would he want to see? Perhaps you can
think of a few gardens that would top his list – filled with carefully-chosen plants,
lovingly and expertly cared for. Perhaps
you would hope that he would choose to drop in on your garden. But we’re
assuming that this expert would be coming to enjoy the very best gardens and
praise their hard-working creators. We
might instead be shocked to find that he preferred to visit my garden where grass and bushes are
barely under control and weeding means getting out the strimmer. What if the expert only wanted to see
gardens like mine – the least well-kept gardens with the most weeds? Perhaps we would then have to change our mind
and conclude that he had not come to praise good gardeners but to help bad
gardeners and to transform our wastelands into something much better.
Saul made a similar mistake.
It’s clear from the Bible that he assumed that the long-awaited Messiah
would come to praise the efforts of Pharisees like him whose well-manicured
lives displayed the fruit of living according to the best rules and
traditions. This led Saul to conclude
that Jesus was definitely not the one
they were waiting for – he seemed to seek out those whose lives were obviously
not going well, those who were struggling to keep the weeds down and who knew
that there was nothing praiseworthy about their lives. But Jesus had not come to hand out prizes –
he rolled up his sleeves and got to work rescuing wastelands. It took the famous encounter with Jesus on
the Damascus Road to convince Saul that he had been so wrong about Jesus and
wrong to think that he did not need Jesus’ help. His pride was gone; in its place a deep gratitude
that Jesus had shown him such kindness.
He wrote later, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so
that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited
patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal
life.” (1 Timothy 1:15-16)
What might the Gardener do with your life?
Sincerely
Graham
Burrows
781210
vicarburtonholme@gmail.com