Risk in Beauty

I'm wired for results.  I like good plans, hard work and predictable outcomes.  This doesn't prepare me well for life in the Kingdom.  The apostle Paul says "I planted, Apollos watered but God gives the yield."  While I appreciate Paul's preparation for Christian service I prefer good plans, hard work and predictable outcomes.  Not because they yield the best results (God results) but because they're safe.  I also like safe.  

Recently we started our third year of a Summer Camp in the Village where I pastor.  It's a small quaint community with many positives and many problems.  In many ways, it's a microcosm of our culture, plenty of beauty, but headlines and gossip prefer the bad.  Our church is housed in an former elementary school that we've re-purposed into a Community Center.  Our vision is simple, Love God-Love Others.  In our context we believe this means investing heavily into this community that is marked by bad reputation and bad actors.  We believe God has a plan for our town, a trans formative plan,  and we play a role in that bigger story.  Our camp is part of His plan.   Three days a week 100 kids from the neighborhood come to the community center to sing, dance, eat, read, exercise, serve and learn how God is relevant in their lives.  It's a big deal in our small town.  

Last Friday the kids from each age group decorated large flower pots and planted flowers along the sidewalk of our Community Center.  They loved getting their hands dirty, arranging the flowers and watering when they were complete.  When it was all finished it was beautiful.  Unfortunately, not everyone see pots with flowers as beautiful but instead an opportunity to act out and vandalize.  Remember I said our town is both beauty and bad.   Like most communities, a bad actor with a strong kick can ruin the work of 10 well intended 1st graders.  It's stupid and it makes me mad.  (Sometimes Pastors get really mad.)  Monday morning we had the 5/6 the grade boys (They call themselves The Gladiators) remove the damaged pot and replant the flowers in the remaining nine.  All was well again, beauty restored.

The interesting thing about beauty is that it's never permanent and there's always opposition to change.  Monday night we got a call from someone walking past the Community Center, she was very upset because someone had pulled flowers out of the pots and thrown them on the sidewalk.  Two days of camp, two acts of vandalism.  I was mad...again.  Remember, I like results, especially results that are permanent and other people don't mess up.  Unfortunately, life, Kingdom life, works nothing like that.   When I woke up this morning I was already making plans on how we can better protect the beauty outside our Community Center.   I took a drive to see how bad the damage was and what was needed to replace the broken beauty.  When I'm mad, I'm also driven, both are bad things for me.   

I have found in my years of following Jesus that His ways are not always mine but He's always a patient and loving teacher.  On my drive over to the Community Center I was imagining the conversations we'd have with the kids that invested their time and creativity.  I was preparing the talking points for how best to assure them that the whole world is not like the person(s) that vandalized our pots.  I knew I needed to motivate our volunteers to not get discouraged by these senseless acts.  However, when I pulled around the corner to assess the damage I saw 9 beautiful pots, perfectly manicured and recently watered.   While I had spent the night upset and planning, someone came by replanted and re-watered the pots.  Beauty restored, faith in humanity restored.    

Of course the question for today is "How many more times will someone vandalize the pots?".  I expect several.  However, I have to remember that when God called our family to serve this Village eight years age he didn't say it would happen quickly, he only told me that He would bring Beauty from Ashes.  I believe Him.  That's where the risk comes in.  Hope is messy and dangerous.  It has critics and negative predictors.  You see, the negative prediction is right most often.  Hope for beauty requires taking a risk that you'll be wrong more often but live for the eventual change.  I see that change coming in the hands of the kids that took the risk to create beauty in spite of the potential for bad.  We plant and water, and replant and re-water, but God gives the yield.  

The Gladiators