How Mr. Carrotpants Is Like Our Faith
Please stand, as I introduce you to my newest friend, (and recent harvest) Mr. Carrotpants. Oh sure, he looks like an orange Butterball turkey but he is ALL carrot.
I posted this on a social media site and someone mocked it, in jest called it a, “monstrosity” (Poor Mr. Carrotpants!) but it made me think how this is so much like our perception of how faith should feel.
Hang on while I jump this chasm…
You see, Mr. Carrotpants is a product of his environment, in the truest sense. Way back in June, I planted carrots but because my cat tends to dig things up in this particular box, I just planted and forgot them. By the time they sprouted, I was in the busyness of summer, so thinning them was quick and careless. As August came, so did a bout with (almost) Lyme Disease, a dear uncle infirmed, my child returning to school and a reboot of a large, well-known church fundraiser, which in June, I thought would be a good idea to chair. So the carrots were never thinned again, they were neglected…and they just took off into this beautiful array of carrot greens.
As September came, I was feeling better and went out to visit the carrots when I noticed that there was a load of carrots desperately trying to live. I could almost hear them screaming “MOVE OVER! I AM TRYING TO GROW OVER HERE!” as they all vied for space. Though there were some that were willing volunteers who gave up their lives so that the stronger and more rooted carrots could grow. (That is my way of saying I started seriously thinning them.) As I pulled some to make room for others, it dawned on me how there is a correlation to our faith journey.
Stay with me here.
It’s in the rootedness. It’s in the thinning. It is in the prioritizing of what should stay and what needs to go. Of what we no longer have room for if we are going to produce any fruit at all. So we pluck a few sprouts that we thought might have taken hold. Seeds that were planted in the hope that something would grow, something that would be strong enough to go the distance. That can be uncomfortable since we don’t have any guarantees we are plucking the right ones! But, we can’t expect everything, every aspect of our enormous faith, every sprout in our garden, every relationship we form on this journey, to have the space and time needed to take hold and to produce fruit.
This can be hard for those of us in a ministry that is about expanding and growing. It can be hard to accept that some seeds just won’t take, won’t stay and won’t go to full life. It can be especially hard if you are a person who is perpetually hopeful, because reality can be harsh.
As I thinned them most recently, I had to make choices about what carrots would stay and some of those choices were not easy. But the growing season is coming to an end and I didn’t want to lose out on the whole crop by not accepting that some, though they were fighting hard, had to go. Likewise, as I grow older, as I experience more and learn more, I find that I am thinning out what I hold onto in my faith. I have never been one who over-focuses on devotions, but I have always started my day with prayer and centered myself in God. I have found that as I have become even more rooted in that kind of faith experience, I have become less comfortable with other things. And that is okay because it is all where God is leading me anyway.
Enter Mr. Carrotpants, a physical reminder that it is really God who will determine what takes root and bears fruit. When I pulled the carrot up tonight, I expected one large carrot but instead got this. An interesting development and reminder that no matter what we think we are doing the God who created all (including humor) might just have other things in mind…like a carrot that looks like britches.
