Three Blocks Closer…

One of the hardest parts of loving people for me is knowing that no matter how much I love somebody they may never be able to love themselves, that there is only so much I can do to help them, that there is a fine line between loving and enabling. There is a parable in the Bible called the parable of the sower. In this parable, a farmer is sowing his seeds and it talks about four different places where seeds can fall. Some seeds fall on a path and animals eat them before they can grow, some fall on shallow soil and are not able to bear the sunlight, others fall among thorns and are choked out by the competing plants, and then some seed falls on good soil and produces a harvest.

I grew up hearing this parable and I always just imagined myself as the seed; hoping, praying that I had fallen on good soil and would go on to grow into the plant I was meant to be. Only recently, did I go back and think about it from the farmers perspective. The age of hydroponics and agricultural tech that I grew up with led me to think of sowing seeds as something surgical, precise, a science that is now understood.

Unfortunately in the parable, the farmer did not have forceps or the time that allowed him to curate the ground around each individual seed. The farmer did not go through each seed choosing which soil it would be in. The seeds were “scattered”. The farmer threw them and didn’t think about which ones would grow and which wouldn’t, he just knew that some would. The farmer did not go and check up on each individual seed everyday to see if it was growing, he just knew some would. There wasn’t one seed that he watched individually go from seed to harvest, he even knew that he wouldn’t harvest all of them himself, but his family and any helpers, would harvest some of them.

It can be hard when we spread love in our community to those around us and watch it get snatched away from them. Hard to see them fight through hell to try and love themselves only to get choked out by the thorny plants around them. The only consolation is knowing that some of the love we spread will produce a harvest, that some of the love we show people will one day bloom into a healthy community, and the hope that any seeds lost along the way will be harvested by another community some day.

Our security guard Mike called me a couple weeks ago at about 9 pm. There was a man sitting on the front porch of one of our buildings. I drove over and talked to the young man named Jay. He said he wanted to go to a rehab house in Indiana. Mike and I said we would take him. We loaded up and started to head over towards the expressway. We made it about three blocks and he asked to pull over so that he could smoke a cigarette to calm his nerves. I pulled into the gas station so he could grab a smoke. He wasn’t able to bring himself to get back in the car. It’s hard to see someone so close to committing, and knowing no love in the world can get them to the place they need to be. Some make it a week closer to freedom, others make it five years closer to freedom. The only thing we can do is trust that the Love we showed that night was able to get Jay three blocks closer to freedom, even if we’re not the one who get to see it.

Ethan

While our 1,000 neighbors giving $25 a month campaign has officially ended, we are still looking for partners to help sponsor students at Mighty Oak Academy. If you can join in and partner with us please click the link below.

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Mighty Oak Spring Collection ‘23 will be released tomorrow. Keep an eye on our social media to get the link. The link will also be in next weeks Love Letter.

If you are interested in volunteering or to find out more information about supplies needed please email: info@lovecityinc.org or call (502) 272-078.