Lessons from the garden

     I love to go to the garden!  My garden is a place of refuge.  No one comes to the garden with me because they don't want to pull weeds!  So, there I am in the garden (my cell phone left in the house) pulling weeds and all around me are the incredible plants that will feed me this year and into next year.  That is, if I play it right.  The garden has all kinds of vegetables that grow and ripen at different times even thought they were planted at approximately the same time.  My rhubarb is a perennial and I've already had 2 harvests of it's sour fruit.  Both harvests were before the actual planting of the other plants took place.  Last years parsnips and garlic are back and prolific in their production.  Neither of these two crops took any effort on my part.  They, like the rhubarb are perennial.  Then there are the asparagus.  Again perennial in nature they are in their second year.  Next year they will be producing a crop that we can actually consume.  The rest of the garden are filled with annual crops that I plant every year.  In the Christian life we should be perennial in all that God wants in our life and annual with that which we want.  Our needs seem to be miraculously met by God time after time.  The "perennialness" of God's blessings is amazing.  Just consider the air we breath, water we drink and other elements we take for granted.  Daily God plants seeds that are "annual" in nature are daily in what we (once planted) share our blessings with others.
     Two very important elements in my garden are the fertilizer and the water needs.  Should I deplete the soil the produce loses quality and quantity.  Should I not water the plants may wither and die.  So, in the fall of last year I spread a great amount of manure on the soil and just let it sit.  The winter rains washed in the nutrients and this spring when I rototilled the soil, it was very rich in nutrients.  The manure is transformed into what the soil wants and needs to grow the plants I need.  Out of the ugliness of manure and the stench of it's composting comes something good.  This is much like the valleys we travel through in life.  None of us live on the mountain top.  All of us travel to and through the valleys from time to time.  In spite of our focus on where we are God always has a "future" focus for our lives.  He knows better than us that it's the valleys that cause growth.  It's during the valleys that we are in "fallow ground" being enriched even if we don't acknowledge that event.  So, the next time the rain falls and you are in a valley, look forward to the blessings of God to emerge in the spring of your life.  Watch the blessings grow into that mountain top experience where the fruit of the labor you and God have gone through is manifested.
     What would any garden be without weeds.  Where do they come from?  I pulled them all last year!  Why did they come back?  It's kind of like how come our clothes are turned inside out in the washer and dryer.  We don't know the answer.  The weeds can and need to be pulled both in the garden and in my life so both the plants and my life can grow uninhibited by the weeds stealing nutrients and water.  The weeds are the sins in life.  We may think that that "little sin" doesn't hurt.  However, that "little sin" sucks away the life that God wants us to have.  That "little sin" becomes a big weed that steals away the nutrients, water and block sunshine.  The more "weeds" we pull, the greater chance of having a garden where the fruits of the Spirit can be evidenced and the message of the Gospel lived out in our lives.  While I don't have a problem pulling weeds in my garden I seem to have difficulty doing so in my own life.  Why is that?  Why do I resist that which is good and embrace that which is bad? 
     I'll go out to my garden today as I do every day.  I'll go around and survey the crops of vegetables and pull the weeds that weren't there yesterday.  Maybe they are new or maybe they are just one's I've overlooked.  I'll water the garden and continue to wash the nutrients into the soil where the plants can use them to give me a crop of food to meet my needs.  God has a wonderful system for my health.  He has thought of everything whether or not I acknowledge his process.  I live blessed because God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.  It's always my choice to be part of his plan or to be outside his plan.  It's your choice as well.