I’ve never played Farmville, a game that used to be an obsession of all my FaceBook friends. But I did once preach a sermon that focused on Farmville, and when I ran across it the other day I decided I’d share a few of the thoughts from that sermon that still resonate with me today.
Farmville is a little like heaven. If you’ve never played it, the short version is that it’s a virtual farm in which you get to plant and harvest crops and build buildings. But the real attraction to Farmville, like all FaceBook games, is that you can cooperate with your neighbors, your FB “friends”, to build an even better farm.
In Farmville you can visit your neighbor’s farms. You can fertilize their crops for them (click), and feed their chickens (click). And they do the same for you! In the process of doing nice things for each other you get points. You find treasures. You send gifts to others (“Here’s a chicken for you!”) and you receive them. You can even do a virtual barn-raising, cooperating with all your friends, the more the merrier, to build more storage space for all the stuff you’ve collected.
In that respect, Farmville is a little bit like heaven. There is no way to hurt someone else. You simply can’t do it. You cannot take their stuff or do donuts in their front yard or mistreat their animals. No one ever goes hungry. No one gets sick in Farmville, and no one dies. Even the animals, when they are “harvested”, are not really hurt. And everything is free in Farmville. It is all given to you by grace.
But, as Dorothy once said, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Farmville anymore.” (Or something like that.)
Our real life is not Farmville. We hurt. In fact, we hurt a lot. Not just our bodies, which are subject to every little germ and every bump and bruise, but we get so easily hurt in our hearts and our minds and our spirits. A harsh word – even a harsh silence – can wound us. We long for attention. We wish for love. And we are seldom satisfied with what we receive. If only we had a *true* friend. If only someone understood me!
Life is not Farmville. But perhaps it is something better. Just like we find imaginary treasures that we can share with our Farmville friends, perhaps there are REAL treasures that we get to share – and which bring tears of joy – with our real friends.
Paul wrote, “we have this *treasure* in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. …Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-18)
This is not theoretical language. These are not digital truths that exist only in a virtual world. Paul says that we have a real treasure, a fortune, a windfall of wonderful things. It is concealed in a jar of clay – that is, our weak and broken and too-fat and aging and wrinkled and uncooperative bodies. The broken aspects of our lives are so easy to see. Of course they are! Treasures are always hidden, aren’t they? But Paul says that within these difficult lives we have a treasure.
And the reason our treasure is hidden beneath our messed up lives is so that everyone will know that we didn’t put the treasure there ourselves. It came from God.
So what difference does the treasure inside make? It means that no matter how hard pressed we may be, no matter how perplexed we may feel, no matter how persecuted we are, no matter even if we have been struck down to the ground – we are not crushed, or despairing, or abandoned, or destroyed. Instead, because of the treasure, because of Jesus living in us, we are “inwardly being renewed day by day.”
Every day a new life! Do you know what that sounds like? It sounds a bit like Farmville to me. Every day there will be more of what we need. Every day a brother or sister in Christ will share with me some of their treasure, and I will share mine. Every day I will find once again that it is all a gift. I didn’t really do it. God did it in me.
Jesus said that his Father is a Gardener. (John 15:1-5) What a wonderful thought. Sometimes, it’s true, he prunes and trims. But it is he who brings forth joyful, sweet fruit. I pray that you will see his gardening goodness in your life today.
Amen.