An Entry from a garden blog 7 years ago

Friday, July 2, 2010
A Passion and a Way to Share It
I have been blessed with a passion for gardening and with a need to share this passion with others. I have been looking at some different ways to involve my church in a garden ministry. My original excitement was the possibility that we might start a garden right on the church campus. After thinking about it, this just didn't seem doable. The next idea was that maybe we could start a garden on the property of one of the members. Before that was ever finalized or really even acted on, the associate pastor of our church, volunteered his backyard. I was excited about that until I realized that we would have to destroy some rather nice landscaping and as Methodist pastors are apt to be moved any year, there was also the possibility that the next family to occupy that house would not be happy about it being there.

After we went through all of this thinking, the eureka moment happened. I had been involved in a neighborhood garden for several years that was improving every year but never seeming to live up to its potential. The garden was started after the City of Tifton was given a piece of derelict land across the street from Brother Charley’s Rescue Mission, a place for homeless men to stay. The idea has been to get the men from the mission involved in the garden. Some of them have but they are the ones who seem to get jobs or move on. The turnover among residents is enough that no one is there to take charge of the garden so a lot of the vegetables are not harvested. I am hoping that we can get a group of people to commit to working this garden as a community outreach mission project. I would love to see people of all ages from my church and other churches working together with folks from the mission and the community around the garden. If we can get a group of committed people involved, enough produce can be grown to provide fresh vegetables for the mission, the soup kitchen, the food bank and people from the surrounding community.

And the Lord said to them, “When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was thirsty you gave me a drink to quench my thirst." And they asked him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food? When did we find you thirsty and give you something to drink?” And the Lord replied, “The food and drink that you share with the least of my brothers and sister, you also share with me.
from Matthew 25:31-46 - my paraphrase
Posted by Richard Burton at 6:49 PM