Plunging my hands in damp dark dirt gratifies me. Gardening barefooted is the best. I like to feel the dirt between my toes. Yet, gardening is not easy for me. Usually, I am too busy to do what it takes to reap an abundant harvest. However, planting seeds, I can do that. I can even hoe regularly until the young shoots press through the soil. Each year, I plant a garden, I go through the same motions. I till the land, dig furrows, plant seeds, and hoe for a month. Then it happens. Life. Life gets in the way of my best intentions. First, a week may pass. Then another week passes. Before long, I find a well watered bed of weeds.
Many times I returned to my garden to weed my neglected plot. Guilt and remorse nagged at me. Then I murmur and whine because God chose to curse mankind with weeds and thorns. Wise gardeners wear gloves when they weed. Not me. So, I complain more emphatically when I grab a thistle plant with irritated gusto. As the blood pools on my fingertips, I renew my commitment to wear gloves when I weed. This is an annual ritual. And, yearly I remind myself to get gloves. Annually, I remind myself to persistently weed the garden. I never do. Someday, I will learn.
One year, I planted ample corn. I remember laying the rows out neatly and using a ruler to properly space the corn seed. A few weeks later, I eyed the row of corn and noticed something odd. Corn plants were growing everywhere. The initial rows were obvious. But, there were corn plants coming up scattered throughout the garden. As is often the case, the children helped me plant seed. Having the children help in the garden is a good idea. They learn how to work at a young age. However, gardening with children is hazardous too. Sometimes they skew the rows or worse, when they are weeding they pull up a crop rather than a weed. However, this planting season we worked together in a spirit of cooperation. I didn’t recall a child casting seed outside our rows.
I hoed and hoed till sweat poured off me. All the while I was bewildered about what to do with the corn that seemed to be coming up everywhere. I decided to hoe up most of the plants that did not fall into the neat row. My conscience criticized me the whole time for such poor stewardship. I could have left the corn grown and worked around it. After all, it would have meant more food and less waste of seed. Finally, I had enough. The garden started to look better. Stepping outside of the garden, I noticed something more peculiar. Those little corn plants were growing all over the place. I found a robust amount by the light pole near the garden. After stooping to inspect the plants near the light pole, I realized I had not erred in hoeing all those plants. They were weeds commonly known as a dayflower. It looked just like corn. However, the plant began to produce dainty blue flowers after grew twenty inches. What I thought were corn plants were nothing more than weeds.
- You will know them by their fruits …
Gardening has many life lessons to draw upon. And, this situation is no different. How many times have we encountered a person who portrayed themselves as a Christian who turns out to be a counterfeit? By all external appearances they look like a Christian. They go to church weekly. No, maybe they even go to church three times per week. Yet, look at their fruit? Does it line up with the fruit of the Spirit? Upon closer examination of the fruit in their life, they fall dreadfully short of biblical standards. Perhaps, they have a spirit of contention, rebellion, or outright negativity. Maybe they let fear control their every move. We have all seen it in the lives of others. And, if we are real honest, we see some of these things in our lives, too.
This garden metaphor has another application. One that is particularly meaningful to me. I long to walk with the Spirit, to make decisions and take paths that lead me closer to Christ. There are so many ways to live out our biblical worldview. For example, we can homeschool, send our children to a Christian school, or raise godly children to be salt and light in the public school system. We can live an agrarian life, live life supporting agrarian entrepreneurs, or dwell contentedly and closely with God in the heart of the metropolis. We can have two children, a quiver full of children, have no children, or adopt, all while serving the Lord with fervor. My desire remains the same. I want to know Christ. I want to live life as a Christian, with evidence that I am serving the most high King.
Each time I face a new path in my life, I seek God. After examining scriptures and praying, I move forward. But, sometimes I wonder …
How can we tell if the path we are on is in accordance with God’s will for our lives? We should be especially careful, because we may be aiming for a particular crop in our lives. Satan sometimes plants seeds that are much like my garden experience. I thought the plants were corn. Yet, they were counterfeit. We may see a path that looks like the real deal, but upon close examination of the fruit we find, it is counterfeit. I discovered the plant in my garden was a weed by its fruit. The crop may start out looking like a path of righteousness, but we must test it. We test our paths, plans, and decisions by examining their fruit. The fruits of the decisions we make ultimately should line up with the fruit of the Spirit being produced in our lives and in the lives of others who cross our path or journey with us. We can sort out the imitations and weeds by testing our decisions against this measure. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law. Galatians 5:22.
All of our decisions, the paths we take should lead us to walk closer with our God and further the work of His kingdom, bringing Glory and Honor to the most high God.
Udderly His,
The Kansas Milkmaid
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