The topic somehow snaked its way to gardening. Growing food, herbs, etc. I had mentioned that we were thinking of starting a small garden this spring, and our friends talked about the garden that they've been working on.
Nom.
But as stimulating as a conversation about gardening is (and HOW!!), Mike started to get noticeably nervous about the conversation. You know that feeling: the chair shuffling, the nervous looking face, the expression of "I really want to say something but I really REALLY don't want to say it."
Claudine coaxed him a bit, "Why don't you tell them about your idea Mike?" Only to be met with a "Nah, it's not a good one...it's nothing." Too late now, we keep pestering until he puts his idea out into the open. He explains that he's had this idea in his mind since they've moved into their current house to start a community vegetable garden and green house.
A big one.
Turns out, there is a good abandoned building on their street that he says could be pretty easily be converted into a green house, plus the large patches of land around it and on their property for space.
Mike is a very handy guy, so he went on about how the greenhouse and garden system could be run by solar panels that he's able to make (yeah, make himself, told you he was handy) and the excess power could be fed back into the grid...basically paying for itself.
He got more excited as he was talking about it, saying that he'd hope that people in the community could come to the garden/greenhouse and just take whatever food they'd need. That it would all be community owned and managed. People who need food, can come work there in small shifts (an hour or two) to pay for what they'd need. Want some tomatoes? Spend an hour in the greenhouse. Done! You know, that sort of thing.
He went on about all kinds of details about the project for quite a while, and you knew he'd spent some time in thought on this. You also got the impression that he had both the knowledge and the experience to actually pull this off.
But his face started changing again. Instead of looking happy, the hope and excitement slowly started to drain out of it as he was coming off the 'high' of his idea. As he started to explain "Ah, it's too big of a project, it'll never work, it would take a lot to do that, etc etc," you could see how much he was crushing himself with his own idea of letting "reality set back in."
We started to talk about something else instead...
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The problem with what happened to Mike is the same as the problem that happens to all of us.
We have these ideas that seem so large and unattainable that we convince ourselves they're impossible. We convince ourselves that we'd never be able to do them. And worse still, that the idea itself is "nothing."
It's not nothing!
I believe that we're all given dreams, hopes, ideas, passions from God that their fulfillment would not only enrich our own lives, but those around us, and God himself.
I know that I have crazy ideas all the time about projects to try, things to do by myself or with a group of people (you know, say a church for example), and I bet you've had some in the past yourself.
Ideas that you've convinced yourself aren't worth mentioning. Dreams that you've allowed yourself to crush because of the "reality" of it all. I happen to think that if God has given you a passion, a dream, a crazy idea, that he will find a way to get it done through you.
Because it's not YOUR idea in the first place.
It's his.
His idea that he has placed in you because of your specific talents, gifts, personality and everything that makes you who you are.
So if you've ever had one before, whether you've done it or not; or if you have one right now, I'd be really interested to know...
What's his crazy idea that he has placed inside of you?
