Consider This: The Garden

Consider This: The Garden: I planted a summer garden this year and waited with great anticipation for the seedlings to grow and bear their vegetables.   I watered the...

The Garden

I planted a summer garden this year and waited with great anticipation for the seedlings to grow and bear their vegetables.  I watered them daily and woke up every morning to check their progress.  I was like an expectant parent waiting on the birth of the new addition.   As I tended the plants, I took pictures, and talked to them.  Finally the plants began to flower, which signaled the coming of the veggies. I could hardly contain myself. It was much like God, when we are born again and overflowing with potential.  How he must wait with anticipation as we learn and grow, waiting for our maturation when we too will become fruitful in his kingdom. Then one morning, I checked on them, and noticed parasites had attached themselves to my beautiful plants.  They were visible at first on the leaves, then on the veggies themselves.

The okra plants were my personal favorite. They produced abundantly, but alas, I applied plant food on them and left for vacation.  When I returned the leaves were all dead, and it looked as though it were over.  But I nurtured them, cut off the old leaves, and tended them back to health.  To my surprise only one plant started to bear again.  The other grew beautiful leaves and flourished but…no okra!!!  I began to understand the story in Matthew 7:9: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” If beauty was its only virtue, this plant had become useless to me.  If it did not bear; it would be cut down and replaced.

I immediately understood the word, we can be beautiful and filled with God’s spirit, but exist only for ourselves, and be useless to God.   We must use our gift to do kingdom work, and enrich other’s lives.

The tomatoes bore plentifully, and presented yet another scenario.  They became riddled with parasites, and no matter how many times I sprayed them the parasites persisted.  They penetrated the tomatoes, and ate them from the inside out.  Finally I cut the plants down, and threw them away.  The parasites had corrupted them. I only kept the healthy one, the infected plant produced many tomatoes, but the corruption would make them useless.

The lesson:  We can be powerfully used by God producing fruit, and still become infested by parasites, people, and things that corrupt us from the inside out.  And if we do not respond to the remedies which are in God’s word, we risk being discarded by Him.   Our associations matter, after all, 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, ‘Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals."

The lesson:    “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” John15:16