How in the world is it already November? It seems like just yesterday that it was pushing triple digits and we all were being careful how much we moved because it was so hot. Now there is a chill in the air, a crispness in the breeze and frost all over our windshields. The leaves have fallen for the most part and now the clean-up and mulching begins. The dumpster has even had a visit from one of our Ursidae neighbors who didn’t make as big a mess as some of his larger cousins.
In the midst of this Fall wonderland, there is one thing that you cannot avoid. Leaves all over your lawn. Now there are several approaches that you can take to get rid of these. You can cut your grass really short and trust that the wind will move them over to someone else’s lawn. You can rake them and bag them. You can put a bag on your mower and bag them. You can even mulch them up. I’m pretty sure that I’m forgetting a few as well.
Back when I was younger and we had just gotten our first mulching mower my Mom and Grandfathers were giving me a hard time because I needed to get raking. I brought up what I thought was a great idea, we won’t rake them, and will save the money from bagging them. To say that they were dubious would be an understatement. At least a dozen times I heard a phrase, “but we’ve always done it this way, that’s how you get rid of leaves.”
Now the first year there were some growing pangs. I didn’t lift the front of the mower up, and had a hard time with the chain link fence having a pile of leaves. On the up side no money was spent on yard waste bags. Personally I think that this was why the next year Mom didn’t say anything in the hope that one more year would break my drive. But I had learned from those growing pangs. And at the end of the season, she looked out at the yard, and didn’t say that I was right, but at least said that the yard looked good.
One of the hardest things that we in the church encounter is the fear of something not working. I remember when I was first in ministry talking with the other RCA minister in town about an idea, and she responded that it wouldn’t work because they had tried it once about ten years ago. The difficulty is that just because something doesn’t work once doesn’t mean that it can’t. Sometimes you need to look at it and figure out why it didn’t work.
Think about every decision that the early church and churches made. Had they ever done what they were doing before? Did they succeed? Sometimes. Did they fail? Sometimes. Often churches look at the Acts 2 church and look at all the things that they did and try their best to copy or make use of what was done. Except for embracing a willingness to fail. I’m in no way advocating that we should like failure or enjoy it. But we shouldn’t treat it as an all or nothing proposition. It also isn’t willingness to fail a million times. But it is embracing a willingness to give something a chance.
When we try, when we embrace both a willingness to get things wrong but also to correct and try again, we are allowing the Holy Spirit to move and act. It doesn’t mean that the program, event or what not will happen as we hope. But just because it wasn’t the success we had hoped for, doesn’t mean we should not try. When we quit before we start, when we dismiss what might be the work of the spirit before it is able to move us we are ignoring God inspiring us to live out our calling as children of God. So sisters and brothers lets take the phrase, “we tried that before,” or the phrase “That won’t work” and banish them away. And let us embrace the possibility of failure, and at the same time embrace the possibility of the
Holy Spirit leading us to do something new.
Blessings
Rev Bill