By Pamela Olivetree
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. – John 10:10
Forget about talking to plants. If we listen, plants have plenty to say themselves! Like the healthy spider plant I’ve had for years, simply hanging in the corner of my office giving beauty and purifying the air I breathe. But lately it’s been turning pale and sickly.
First though, it created babies. Dozens of them, hanging off the branches like cute, miniature versions of their mother. I really didn’t want to cut them off. They looked so happy and content, and plus, it meant work for myself. I would need to plant them in a mix of water and soil, then get pots and more soil. You know… I would have to become a surrogate spider plant mother.
After ignoring the growing size of the babies, and the subsequent weakening of the mother plant, I then noticed the babies were developing little root systems! Reaching down and out into the air, trying to find their own soil and water to plant themselves. I teared up. They looked so pitiful tied to their mother’s apron string (or stems, in this case), while crying out for a life of their own. Now if this plant was in its natural environment of being low to the ground, the babies could survive without my help. But seeing I had this plant in my house, I knew what I had to do. I had to cut the babies off. And I had to anchor them into their own soil to help them become mature, reproducing adults themselves. Otherwise they wouldn’t live long. And the mother plant too – she needed to let them go. Too much of her energy was being sapped giving nourishment to these little ones who were ready to be on their own.
This is the daily cycle of life, growth, and reproduction in the natural kingdom. In this case I just had to help it along a little. But a great trade-off was the spiritual lesson received in the process. The Kingdom of God is like this spider plant. It is in a constant flow of receiving God’s Life, and reproducing more of God’s Life. Any alternative to this is death, and produces death. Systemized religion by nature seeks to gather and keep its disciples hanging on itself. The result are spiritual babies who are immature, dependent on their leaders, and continually paying their dues. But it’s a characteristic of the organic life of God to produce children who grow up and multiply the original Seed of Life. This is not programmatic “evangelism” either, that brings people back under the umbrella of the “big Mama or Papa”. No, it is instead the spiritual richness of true and everlasting family that is promised to us in Christ.
Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.
Mark 10:29-30 & Matthew 19:29