I took a picture once of some flowers growing in a gravel sidewalk. It was nothing spectacular but like weeds that are able to be rooted in the crack of a cement patio, moss thriving on the limbs of a tree, or (you name where you’ve been surprised to find something growing) I’m always impressed to witness how plant life can emerge everywhere – even in the most unlikely of places and conditions.
Welcome to ripen – a gardening lifestyle magazine, launched in September 2022. We at Lifestyle Media Group want to help you take your passion for planting, growing, harvesting, preparing, and eating and help you to discover and live how the Christian faith takes gardening to a whole new level.
We want to help you understand nice concepts like fertility, yields, irrigation and not so nice concepts like pests, rot and even hard work both in terms of the usual physical definitions and also the less explored spiritual applications.
AND – with God’s strength you can emerge strong, vibrant, beautiful and generously yield more than you can imagine and hope for. In a world culture too often diseased by hate, eroded by despair, and scorched by burning desires that damage rather than bring fruition, God has planted you to do the unlikely – be life.
We’re starting the first issue with the theme everywhere. We invite you to cultivate this theme in all kinds of ways:
- Appreciate farms and farmers, do gardening in a way that challenges you but makes sense for you or at least get a potted plant or some cut flowers to place in your home.
- Consider the who, what and why of everywhere. Be curious to better understand the person who put forth the effort to make that yard look beautiful. Dig deeper into what shapes the choices people make. Start to define why you find yourself in this place at this moment.
- Concepts of gardening are everywhere. Look for the young family growing their life together. Smell and taste fresh daily enthusiasm for life in the marketplace of ideas and conversation. Cook and serve some fellowship that matures into deeper relationships.
Our green world is much more than natural resources delicately in balance. We’re all called to be actively good stewards of all of life in the everywhere where God has us. Ideally that’ll produce full, beautiful and nutritionally dense fruit. Sometimes your faithfulness to God through your gardening may seem like just a single unspectacular flower in the most unlikely of places and conditions that ultimately gets picked and given to encourage someone. Enjoy it and be thankful that in #GodsSpace you’ve emerged to bring the life of Christ to others.
Grow deep in Christ,
Brad Bloom, Publisher
