I started to wonder if exploring the whole idea of journey's really is me desperately seeking out new and innovative ways of discipling and being discipled?

what is discipleship? is it relevant to our world today? can people be discipled before they are a disciple? is discipleship hospitality?

once i really wanted to eat a watermelon i had grown. i grew up in the city, a world away from farms and growing. but something in me was determined. i spoke with a friend, Jonas, who knew about "growing things". He explained how to get started, the tools, the process, the nurturing. He told me how watermelons had to be started in cup first. little cups filled with just enough dirt and really saturated daily with water. He told me how they would need sun. He told me how one day they would be too big for the cups and need to be transplanted to the real earth. He told me how it would take all summer. He told me he would set aside space for me in his garden for the great transplant, the growing, and the harvest.

And so i started. I got the little cups. I planted my packet of watermelon seeds. I started watering. two weeks went by and my little cups were just alters of mud. but one scrunchy morning i came out to those little cup to the birth of my first watermelon sapling.

From that day on love grew those seeds. I found myself rushing home to check them, re-arranging them in the sun for "perfect exposure", even reading bible verses to them (isaiah of course)... and grow they did. Soon they were to big for their cups and i drove them out to the farm... the real earth. I have never been so nervous to hand off my babies into the hands of another. but hand off i had too.

the rest of the summer was spent letting the watermelons "go native"... watermelons need room. to spread out, to go viney, to frutify... i would go out and check my watermelons like a mother checks her baby. I would take people to visit them. I was so proud....

oh the day the fruit was visible! but still i had to wait. blazing summer days began to turn to crisp autumn opportunities.... then the time came...

The watermelons were harvested. I planned a special party that night in honor of my full grown watermelons. my friends joined me in laugh and enjoying the blessing... cutting into that first watermelon, letting my lips glisten with the taste of my first harvest was a mixture of pride, honor, satisfaction, and respect.

is discipleship like growing watermelon seeds?