Garden-tender

A series inspired by sights of Kauai.
With its nickname as “The Garden Island,” we expected to see lots of eye-candy as we traveled throughout Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. But when we came over the top of one hill and saw a sign, “Nursery,” we turned in, wondering what a commercial nursery in the tropics could offer.  Oh, my, the shelters went on and on and on, protecting new and maturing plants. The web site of this facility boasted 60,000 square feet of greenhouses and more than seventy acres of landscape plants and materials. The facility covers 150 acres and employs about a hundred people.  What a far cry from one of our town’s seasonal “garden centers” at a local appliance and furniture store. It exists for a few months in the spring, a third of the parking lot covered with bark and rows of plants and trees.
 

As we walked through a small portion of the facility, I thought of how appropriate it is, that the word “nursery” is applied to the “beginnings” of both plant and human life. The repeated use of the term “little children” by the aging, venerable apostle John echoed in my heart. The last of the apostles to die, somewhere in his nineties after a long imprisonment on a remote island, his weak old heart beat with compassion for the spiritual children he would leave behind.  His first epistle ends simply but with an impassioned plea, “Dear children, keep yourself from idols” (1 John 5:21). Of all the ways he could have said, “the end,” he “punched out,” as it were, with what he saw as the greatest threat to the church: idols.

 

The whole epistle seems to throb with John’s fatherly concern for believers. Frequently he used the term “children” (Gk: teknon) or “little children (teknion, diminutive form).  As an old man, weak in body and soon to die, it seems all he can think of were those fresh-faced believers who haven’t been spiritually seasoned like him.  He wanted them to grow into a robust faith, despite the apostasy of the times:

As I read the epistle, I have to stop whenever I see “children.” It suggests both our position in Christ and our spiritual vulnerability. Linger as you read these:

“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.” (1 John 2:1)
“I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.” (2:12)
“I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father. (2:13)
“Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.” (2:18)
“And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him as his coming” (2:28)
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (3:1)
“Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray.” (3:7)
“This is how we know who the children of God are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother.” (3:10)
“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (3:18)
“You, dear children, are from God, and have overcome them [false prophets], because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (4:4)
“This is how we now that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands” (5:2)

Here’s the big message I get from this: in God’s nursery of young, growing, vulnerable  believers, the early church was blessed by a passionate, caring “attendant.”  For the Gospel to be properly “propagated,” John would not shirk his duties until God called him Home. He left us an example.