Dear friends of Mexico Ministries:
I am still in Tuxtepec, but will be home by the time you receive this newsletter. Great progress on the building here continues, and I want to give a special thank you to Pastor Sam Walker, Tom Shaffer, and the Agua Resources team who have been here trying find water on the land - we haven’t yet, but we are keeping at it.
You may not know this about me, but I really enjoy working a garden. I call my garden, “down by the pond,” and I plant onions, tomatoes, okra, black eyed peas, and other vegetables. I like them by themselves, but they taste so much better when they are cooked together.
God has a garden too, and I’m sure he loves his more than I love mine. God started history with a garden, placed a man and a woman there, and dropped in for visits with them there. The Church is a kind of garden of the Lord’s, and it has a great variety growing in it. The Body of Christ is made up of many different people and ministries; “For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are also many are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Romans 12.4,5). God’s garden has such a wide variety of plants, all bearing fruit. We may call them denominations, God calls them His children. God’s children are as diverse as the flowers of nature, and together make a beautiful bouquet that He delights in. Red, yellow, and pink roses; orchids of every color, and here in Texas Indian Paint Brushes and Bluebonnets.
In my garden I even have vegetables that I don’t personally eat - turnips! I grow them because Mary Lou likes them. I don’t condemn them; they’re part of my garden. Are you getting the point I’m trying to get across? Why don’t we walk with the Lord in the cool of the day and enjoy the diversity of his garden? After all, we’re going to spend eternity together, so we maybe ought to start appreciating those who are different from us in the here and now. Even the turnips among us!
God bless you,
Larry