Beginning to Flourish - Week Nine
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February 16, 2025
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Flourishing Together — reflecting on living so that all may flourish
Our Father the Gardener, invites us to be apprentice gardeners — helping one another to flourish. We have contributions to give — working for hope, restoration and righteousness — alongside the Ultimate Gardener. As we work as apprentice gardeners we find that in the flourishing of one another we are nourished, in the nurturing of our neighbour, we ourselves blossom too.
SEEDS TO SOW: This week consider how you can support organisations working towards fair, compassionate and just solutions to the problems that face our global environment.
Read Ephesians 3: 16-21
Rooted in love…
Q: Having read this passage what are you inspired to attempt to do for the glory of God — rooted as you are in love!
Q: How can we begin to be the agents enabling others to see their gifts to grow in God’s garden?
Read Amos 9: 13-14
A restoration-people following a God of restoration.
Too often as Christians we read the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures in such a way that we spiritualise their prophecies. So we look at this passage in Amos and relate it to spiritual growth.
Q: We believe that God will restore and build his coming Kingdom. But what if God is using these words to call us to help physically build a more equitable world here and now?
Q: Where can we plant gardens and vineyards and rebuild ruins?
Q: Could it be that areas of God’s garden lie untended because we have failed to encourage others to get involved in creating and growing fruit bearing plants in the rich soil of God’s love and grace? How can we spur one another on?
Read Luke 10: 25-37
Coming full circle…
We began at the start of Lent thinking about the fundamental things we need so that from that basis we could consider what it means to flourish. The wounded, abandoned, shaken soul in this story needed to get his breath back, to have something to drink, to be given a shelter, and be restored to a community. So that’s exactly what the Samaritan did.
And those are the same things all us wounded, abandoned, shaken souls need.
Q: How do the words of Jesus , “Go and do likewise” make you feel? How can we go about doing “likewise” in our day to day life?
This is how we act as apprentice gardeners — gently nurturing one another in a Kingdom that flourishes one shaken soul at a time.
In today’s busy world of instant achievement we often don’t leave enough time for others around us to flourish. Flourishing takes time. And it requires nourishment and encouragement.
Q: What are the qualities required of a community, or a family, or an individual that wants to flourish?
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