Cultivating Talk

This was a talk that I did recently at The Call, Bobbing. Enjoy.


The weather has been beautiful recently, such an excuse to sit in the garden with a nice cup of tea and enjoy everything that is around you.

Well, you could do if you have a lovely garden to sit in.

My garden, that I share with my dad, is a lovely big garden and I appreciate every aspect of it. The only problem I have is that my dad doesn't necessary see the garden the same way as i do.

As a child, dad had a very strange view on the garden, you could go to the back plot and there you would see this lovely patch, well groomed and organised. A area was full of so much, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, raddish's, rubbarb, runner beans, tomatoes and cucumbers. That was just the tip of the garden really, this beautiful well maintained area was surrounded by two apple and two cherry trees and a small blackberry patch. You may hear this and think that we must have had a great up bringing with a fabulous fresh fruit and veg and this would be true, but sadly we rarely ventured out in the garden, as for the front half usually had long grass, and the flower patches were over grown, it even became a running joke that dad wasn't interested in that aspect of the garden with my mum putting up a plaque saying "ignore the garden i'm watching the football"

The trouble is, are garden is of a fair size, and it always seemed that by the time dad had finished digging, weeding, planting and maintaining one strip, say the left side, he would have to restart it again, therefore leaving the right side to become a mess. It always seemed to me that dad was only interested in the part of the garden that helps him bare fruit, literally in places.

This year though I have seen things differently, and taking more time with my dad I have actually respected his actions more than my own.

After losing my mum, my dad went into a self indulgent mood, yet with that he ignored the garden completely. My sister in law and myself were always coming down hard on him, moaning that he should ignore his patch down the bottom, and stop "phaffing" around with this one bedding strip and sort the garden out properly, still lacking the motivation, we decided to do it instead. It took us one day to rough dig the garden, pull all the straw like weeds and bine and plant flowers in the bed and pots. The garden looked good, for the first time in years, yet my dad was still moaning.

He sat digging and re digging "his strip" probably concentrating on an area of a a4 piece of paper taking 2/3 hours to complete. How ridiculous i thought.

Yet watching dad prune back the rose bush last November he looked like such an expert. The rose bushes get to about 5 ft tall. It is now about 3 ft, my dad didn't hack at it, he spent an hour neatly cutting away. Now, I admit when I see it, I always think that he has got carried away, when confronting him his reply was, "now when it blooms it will choose a beautiful path to bloom into growing higher and thicker, producing more roses"

This was when I realised my dad wasn't just a gardener, he showed strict discipline and cultivated.

Cultivating doesn't mean digging everything up in the garden, or choosing your favourite plants and just because some do not fit right that you cut them out of the garden all together, it is about choosing the right time to cultivate them, maybe just spend some time with them and prune back the difficult areas, as like dad did, and find that it will bloom beautifully allowing for a more beautiful journey.

And that, for me, is exactly what God asked Adam to do.

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Genesis 2:15

He wasn't told to dig out the weeds or cut the grass, he was told to work on it and take care of it. In other terms Cultivate.

The same should be used for us, as family, parents and friends. We are meant to help the people around us and cultivate them in the way that God wanted them to be. The problem is that we tend to just be pulling weeds or cutting grass. It doesn't solve the problem, it just hides it for a while.

Sometimes when we go through hardships, don't we try to remind ourselves that God is with us, looking after us, turning the bad into something good? So much can happen in our lives that shape and change us, that helps us on our journey. I know that I experience things that do this nearly on a daily basis. Maybe we need to remember that maybe we are being cultivated.

Going back to my dad, that's what I realised he was doing, we might have pulled out the big weeds and the things that were noticeable, and just slightly turn the soil over, my dad was examining each and every section, digging deep pulling the root of the problem, not allowing anything bad to regrow. He wasn't doing what we were and just having a superficial garden.

But that's not anything new though is it, we all do it, don't we? Having a bad time eating junk food because it makes us feel good, buying new clothes to make us look better. None of these things helps us overcome the correct issue.

We see Jesus Cultivating throughout the Gospels, his whole path was to cultivate, just in the simple fact of having disciples showed us this.

The word Discipline should never be used in the concept of punishment, and that this is where so many fathers "fail." 'Discipline' comes from the word 'Disciple' meaning "follow and train."

That is exactly what we should be doing to one another, steering them in the right direction, and asking that the choices they make to be choices that will please God, most importantly, putting Him central for everything. Time and time again we see Jesus correcting the people around him, he wasn't in anyway doing it as a punishment, even when he was a little rough in doing so, he was training his disciples asking them to deal with issues and follow his example.

We see it when:

Jesus corrected the false teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees by teaching His disciples to be on constant guard against it. He corrected their misinterpretations by appealing to His own authority.

Jesus directly confronted false teachers in the church with the repetitious, "Woe to you…hypocrites."

Jesus Corrected and Confronted Wrong Motives and Excuses: When a self-seeking man boastfully promised to follow Jesus anywhere because he thought it would mean political or financial gain for him. Jesus corrected his wrong motives by telling him that he would be following a homeless Messiah

He then corrected another man who used his aging father as an excuse about why he could not follow Jesus at that time, by telling him that he was as spiritual dead

Jesus corrected the greed and corruption of the money changers in the Temple by making a whip and physically driving them out. He also threw their tables over.

Jesus corrected His disciples on a boat in a storm by showing off His power and rebuking their unbelief. He told them, "O you of little faith."

The prayer life of our Lord prompted the disciple to press Him to teach them to do likewise. How easy it is to ask one who has demonstrated his expertise to share it with others. The disciple asked Jesus to teach them to pray because he knew that this was an area of ignorance and inexperience.

They came to Jesus asking to be disciplined, to be taught, like a child does to an adult. A child has no reluctance to admit that they don't know something, and thus they hound adults with their questions. What we see here with these examples is the ability to learn begins with the ability to admit ones ignorance and to express ones desire to learn.

But not once did Jesus do it in a way to cover up the mess to make it look more appealing, he got straight in said it as it was and corrected the people putting them on the right path.

The same should be used for us, as family, parents and friends. We are meant to help the people around us and cultivate them in the way that God wanted them to be, as well as ourselves. The problem is that we tend to just be pulling weeds or cutting grass. It doesn't solve the problem, it just hides it for a while.

And to be honest not many of us stick to our gardening tasks. So many see the thought of continually helping and cultivating as a tiring job, or that there is something that just isn't right so decide to keep just cultivating one thing, usually their own individual problems. So hiding it away seems such an easy choice.

And that, for me, is exactly what God asked Adam to do. That is exactly what we should be doing to one another, steering them in the right direction, and asking that the choices they make to be choices that will please God, most importantly, putting Him central for everything. We must remember that eternal life is not just a ticket into heaven but a certificate to live as god wanted us to live.

Although nature has proven season in season out that if the thing that is planted bears at all, it will yield more of itself there are those who seem certain that by planting tomato seeds that they'll reap onions. I personally know that at times I've expected to reap good when I know I have sown evil, whatever excuse I might give myself, I have allowed my excuse to cover up and with that not always making myself aware that these actions can only reproduce themselves.

Of course, there is no absolute assurance that those things I plant will always fall upon good land and will take root and grow, nor do I know` that another cultivator did not leave opposing seeds. I do know however that if I leave little chance, if I am careful about the kinds of seeds I plant, about their strength and nature, that I can with reason trust my expectations.

And if we find our own cultivation a little too upsetting to start at the moment, what about the people around us? We are in a world of violence, aggression, riots, children and teenagers running mad.

Here just a little tenderness between others, helping others in need, spreading some good seeds could make life more bearable. I truly believe we as a society have lost the will to cultivate themselves, friends and families and through this we see no courtesy at home filling out into the world with violence and self indulgence. we must be the people creating and recreating an attractive and caring attitude in our homes, lives and in our world. if we expecting every generation that follows us to approve and cultivate then they must see that we approve of ourselves.


So my question to you is, Are you just pulling out weeds? Are you cutting the trees back because they are blocking the light or because you want them to grow in the light? Are you cultivating around you or just gardening?