Fat and flourishing is a good thing

Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; To shew that the Lord is upright: He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him. Psalm 92:13-15

I grabbed this verse just as I was running out the door to Mile High Vineyard yesterday morning.  One would hardly think that a middle-aged lady would find great joy in claiming the promise that she will be fat and flourishing, especially after two days of nonstop eating the most amazing food ever in every cute hipster joint in Denver, but it filled my heart with joy.  

So the sermon was about St. Patrick.  Not the pretend St. Patrick with his green beer and chasing of all snakes from Ireland, but the guy who has been credited with preserving Christianity through the Dark Ages.  That guy. 

Patrick grew up in a nice Christian Italian family in England.  His dad was a teaching elder at church, but none of it particularly grabbed Patrick.  He was dinking around with making bad choices and not particularly giving a rip about God, when one day when he was about sixteen, he was splashing about in the surf with his friends.  And pirates grabbed him.  And took him across the Irish Sea and far into the woods, where he took care of pigs for six years as a slave.  

The good thing about feeding pigs is that it really isn’t that much work and it leaves a lot of time for thinking.  And Patrick’s thoughts turned to prayers, prayers to the God that he had heard about as a small child.  Sometimes even a hundred times a day.  And the prayers changed over time.  At first they were all about “Get me free,” but over time they changed to “May I live free even if I remain a slave.”  

One day he heard a voice: Your ship is ready.  Patrick takes off running, leaving everything, and arrives to the spot on the map seen in his vision 200 miles down coast. A ship was loading up Irish Wolfhounds and because he was so skilled with working with unruly animals, they allowed him on the ship, even though he had no money for passage.  His parents, shocked at the return of the son who they presumed dead, welcomed him back home and to life as usual.  But Patrick was plagued with thoughts of those who had held him captive, and his dreams at night were filled with the Druids.  One night a group arrived, clutching some papers in their hands, and said, “We pray, come and walk among us.”  Patrick prepared himself with training from local church people, and with a small group of friends, he returned to Ireland. He was captured almost immediately, and imprisoned, and sentenced to death.  He demanded to see the Druid Chieftain, who gave his life to Christ.  He said it was because of the joy in Patrick’s face even though he was facing sure death.  Patrick founded 300 churches, training up the Druid chieftains as church leaders.  And that is just the beginning of the story.  

But where Jay the pastor went with the story was the parents.  The parents who nobody really knows about or cares about, but really they did indeed meet their calling: train up a child in the way he should go.  They built the foundation that stood firm when the storms rose and crashed down on everything, Patrick was not washed away.  

Jay asked those called to prepare kids to believe that they can trust in God in hard times to come forward for prayer.  As I knelt in front, the band sang, 

You have planted dreams in the good soil of my heart

Give me patience.