Over the past couple of months, I’ve developed a new appreciation for Aloe Vera.   I remember having an Aloe plant growing up, thinking it was very neat to have a plant in the house that could soothe the burns and scrapes I got.  It was, as it is for so many of us, foreign to me that medicines have their origins in plants.  But recently, I have grown to have a new appreciation for Aloe Vera, and it has to do with Stewardship.

Our theme for our Desert Foothills UMC fall pledge campaign this year was “Garden of Generosity”, and as we were trying to think of how to bring this theme to life in our congregation, we started to talk about having live plants for everyone.  Then some practical things came to mind – where would we get lots of plants, how would it work if we gave away plants and those who are have less of a green thumb found that theirs died all too quickly, what would the point be, exactly?   Then, one of the stewardship committee members shared that he had a bunch of aloe pups that had sprung up over the past year or so, and he thought that maybe he had 60ish plants he’d be happy to harvest and share with the church.  It ended up that he had about 150, of various sizes, all of which came from just 5 aloe plants, which he planted in his back yard a little more than a year ago, after they had been kept in their original, from the plant shop buckets, ignored for months before.

Wow, so that’s three very cool things about Aloe that I’ve named so far: 1. they are a natural medicinal just as they are and provide soothing relief to cuts, burns, scrapes just by breaking off the tip of a frond. 2. they can be ignored, even in the desert heat and dryness, and still thrive, and are thus great for those of us with not-so-green thumbs or who are too busy or just plain lazy when it comes to gardening. 3. they can reproduce like mad, creating pups right next to the mother plant.  But there’s more!

The newest cool thing about Aloe to me now is that we now have a Garden of Generosity, represented by over a hundred of these sister Aloe plants, growing all over Ahwatukee.  These plants started out in the yard of church member, were harvested and replanted.  They were brought to the church to create our Garden in worship throughout our campaign, and then on pledge Sunday, were given out to the congregation.  Each family got to take a part of the Garden of Generosity home with them to remind them of their own part and place in the God’s Great Garden.

God’s Great Garden is God’s gift of sustenance, providence, nourishment, enjoyment to us.  We are also given great responsibility to tend that Garden and help our little part of it to thrive.  We could also see ourselves as seeds in that Garden, cultivated by God to bear the Fruit of the Spirit (including generosity).  And when we put the fruit of all of our sections of that Garden together, HUGE, ENORMOUS, BOUNTIFUL things happen to share the Kingdom of God with others.  That is all pretty cool.

So now, our DFUMC families have a literal part of the Garden of Generosity to tend and to remind us of our commitments to and the gifts flowing from God’s Great Garden.  And that is a very cool thing about Aloe plants.  How is your plant doing? How is your stewardship thriving?