Learning In The Garden

My family had a huge garden when I was a teen. The garden stretched out to about 200 feet in length, and each row that crossed it was fifty feet long. I recall my father planning the garden each year. He regularly rotated the vegetables to new places each year and tried to keep only friendly crops beside each other.

Working in the garden taught me many things. I learned things like, never plant onions beside the potatoes, salt would kill the slugs on cauliflower and cabbage, and that raw corn in the garden was delightfully sweet, sticky, and satisfying. Perhaps the biggest lesson learned was to work hard and be persistent.

As I have pursued God, I have come to understand that, like a garden, God has a plan for each thing He plants in our lives. We may not enjoy everything in our lives, but each item has a purpose. I know that as a teen, I did not enjoy the hours weeding and hoeing the garden. There were times when I would have preferred to go hiking instead of helping the family shell a large wheelbarrow load of peas, but it was not about what I liked, it was about having food for the winter.

Gardening is challenging this year. Over the past few years, I was too busy to get the garden planted. I would till the soil but never find the time for planting each year. The problem with plowing but not planting is that I had no reason to pull the weeds, so the garden area had reverted to a rather wild state. This year I began by tilling the soil and picking up all the quackgrass roots I could find. I tilled again and turned up even more root pieces, which I picked up before planting. I hoped I was saving myself some weed pulling, but when the vegetables came up, so did the weeds. I am always amazed that weeds seem to grow at twice the rate of the things I planted. Pulling weeds in the garden gives me time to think.

I have come to realize that growing a garden is very similar to living life. Once I bury my seeds, I must leave them alone. If I dig up the seeds to check to see if there is any growth going on, I will most likely destroy any new growth. Patience is a requirement for gardeners.

Living in God’s shadow is very much like growing a garden. We can believe the promises and obey the commands in scripture. However, it requires patience to see the fruit of the Spirit develop in our lives. Failure to see any growth in our lives may indicate that we are only acknowledging the commands in scripture. Spiritual growth comes when we are following the instruction of scripture.

I have a love/hate relationship with pulling weeds. I do not enjoy spending the time required to remove the unwanted plants, but I do receive a sense of accomplishment once I get an area of the garden clean of weeds. It is refreshing to see the clearly defined rows of vegetables separated by weed-free strips of loose earth.

I think while I remove weeds. I realized that cleaning the garden of unwanted plants must be very similar to how God operates in our lives. When we choose to live in God’s Shadow, we move closer to God. Moving closer requires that we align our lives more closely with His commands. Thus moving closer to God naturally reveals the “weeds” in our lives. To continue to move closer to God, we must allow Him to remove the weeds. When I review my life, I know there were times when removing the weeds from my life was overwhelming for me. I had to rely on God to do the weeding. There were times when the plant I wanted to pull was something God wanted to cultivate.

Where I live, the growing season varies from year to year. This year we had our last frost in June. Some years we will have our final frost in mid-May. Some years we will have our first fall frost in the third week of August, and other years it will not come until October. Due to this unpredictability, I have to be very selective about what I plant. I need plants that mature quickly but will continue to produce should frost come later than expected.

Our lives are as varied as the weather in the area where I live. We must trust God. He is the master gardener. He will know what will produce the most substantial amount of good fruit in our lives.

I usually have difficulty getting the rest of my family excited about tilling the soil, planting the seed, or weeding the garden. Harvest time is entirely different. Everyone is eager to help. Each person can now see and hopes to taste the results of the work that produced the harvest. Only the person who tills, plants, weeds, and helps to harvest will know the harvest’s real cost. Others may try to imagine the effort required but cannot fully understand it until they have done it.

When we look at another person’s life and marvel at the beautiful things that God has grown in them, we are looking at the harvest. We do not see the time spent pursuing God and living in His shadow. We do not know the time God spent weeding and pruning their life. We often forget that a fruitful life does not magically happen one day. It is the culmination of many years of living in God’s shadow and allowing Him to nurture and direct our growth.

This year it was a very windy day when I tried to plant carrots. The result was that when the carrots came up, I had extra carrots. Some of the carrots formed their little row alongside the primary row, and others grew in between the usual uniform rows. I know that there have times when I have tried to give God some “help” with my life. Those times when I thought I did not need instruction or assistance from God. It is those times when I tried to instruct God that caused irregular rows and random planting in my life.

Sometimes we get impatient with God because we cannot see the harvest. We fail to understand that He is still doing the planting. Several years ago, God generated an interest in me for missions work in South America. So far, I have been unable to engage in such work full time. Sometimes this frustrates me, but then I recognize that it must not be harvest time yet. God will provide the way and work when it is time to harvest the fruit of the desire He planted in me.

Living in God’s shadow requires us to have a gardener’s patience if we want to see a bountiful harvest. The Apostle Paul encouraged the Galatian church about this very idea in Galatians 6:9. “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” (NRSV) Let God plant and weed your heart and life. Doing so will enable you to live closer to Him and see the bountiful harvest He is preparing for you.