Earlier this spring as Amy and I began to brighten up our patio, we bought a couple of new flower pots. We filled each pot with soil and planted an assorted variety of plants in the different pots. We made sure they had plenty of sun, lots of water, and all the things it takes to grow plants in West Texas. A couple of weeks passed by and most of the plants were thriving and flowering. But there was this one pot that was not doing so well. The plant was yellowing. It was wilted. And it just looked terrible. Trying to figure out why this one was not as prosperous as all the others was a mystery. And then it occurred to me that I had never seen any water drain out of the bottom of the flower pot. When the other pots were watered, there would be extra trickle out of the bottom of the container. Sure enough, when I surveyed the flower pot, the plug on the drain hole was still there. I had forgotten to remove it before we filled it with potting soil and planted the flowers. So, each time it was watered, the extra was collecting at the bottom of the flower pot without being able to pass through and it was rotting the soil. I removed the plug from the bottom of the pot and a gully of water erupted out of it. Oh mercy! Not good water. It was a nasty color with a nauseating smell - like raw sewage.
You’ve probably heard the story of the Dead Sea in the Middle East. It’s called the Dead Sea because it has no life in it – no fish, no plants, just a lot of salt. The only thing living in the Dead Sea is thousands of tourists that bob up and down on the surface marveling at the way they can float. And the reason it has no life is because it has lots of water that flows in to it but there is no outlet for the water to flow out of. It’s dead!
The same is true of our lives if we have no outlet. If we are only being filled but aren’t letting it flow out, we are dying. If we only consume and never produce, we are as good as dead. We can sit in church every Sunday and soak it all up and be rotting on the inside. We have to be letting in flow out from us – loving, helping, edifying, encouraging. That’s why one of our values at Aldersgate Church is “Saved People Serve People.”
The good news is after I removed the plug from the drain hole and gave the plant some tender loving care, it came back to life. We’ve named it Lazarus! And if you’re not serving people, you can be a Lazarus too! Just remove the plug covering the outlet and begin to serve.
Ryan Smallwood
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