Lukewarm Crops & Laodiceans

Part 1:

Blocking the Son

Even the richest soil produces a disappointing crop if the gardener doesn’t let the sun warm it up. We learned that the hard way last year.

We had worked the year before on improving our soil, adding lots of amendments, letting some of it lie fallow, and covering all of it with a rich mulch of leaves in the fall.  We continued that as we put our warm weather crops in right after the last frost date; we added more compost, bone and fish meal as we planted. The soil was nice and dark, and loaded with worms. It looked like we were on track for a good crop.

  Then we made our mistake—we put a thick mulch of wood chips down before the soil warmed up. That prevented the sun from fully warming the soil. It looked great, and kept the weeds down, but it also kept the soil temperature down. The result was a disappointing crop. Not a total failure, but well below what we had produced in the past. The results were lackluster at best.

A similar dynamic controls our spiritual lives. In Revelation 3:14-21 St. John delivers Jesus’ message to the church at Laodicea. It was materially rich, but was not producing the fruit Jesus wanted because it had not opened itself to the fire of His love. That negated the good their earthly resources could have done. Something got between the Laodiceans and the Son, just as something got between our soil and the sun. The results were similar. Both were only “lukewarm,” and Jesus was no more satisfied with the Laodiceans than we were satisfied with our summer crop. 

The good news is that those kinds of problems can be overcome. More on that in another post.

[Credit where credit is due; the idea for this post came from Pastor Dave Mann’s sermon on Revelation 3:14-21, delivered on Feb. 28, 2016. A recording of that sermon can be heard/downloaded here.]