I am a gardener. This probably isn’t something that too many people of my age do. I guess there could be a bit more of a trend that way with the organic, ethically-sourced, man-bun, “millennial” crowd, but it’s not a ubiquitous activity by any means. Personally, I think there is no greater joy than going out every morning and finding that under the shady cover of luscious green, a new thing has grown into something sweet or crisp or beautifully vibrant. And to take that thing that almost seems to have appeared by magic and remove it from its delicate environment and bring it into my kitchen- is just exciting. That thing that grew from the dust of the earth has become something entirely life-giving.
If I grow enough all summer, I can produce a harvest greater than my need and I can even store up the yield from my garden, preserving it in various ways so that I can have good things to eat all winter. If I have grown even more, I can take the things that I have grown and give them away, blessing those who did not toil and labor to eat them. These vegetables and fruits that I grow have the potential not only to sustain the life of many, but to be a source of joy and fellowship. How could an activity so blessed not be the epitome of community and near to the heart of that abundant life which is found in Christ? What I labor to bring about should be purposed to serve those around me, even as it blesses and sustains me.
I have always been drawn magnetically to the passages in the Bible that speak on growth and life. Had I the purpose of chronicling each appearance of a gardening or farming metaphor, I’m sure it would fill many pages. I can see very clearly that God delights in life- that God is obsessed with growing and producing fruit. And it’s no wonder- for Jesus, we are told, is life made man. Jesus was so alive that death couldn’t keep Him dead. Jesus has so much life that He can spread it around and give it to all who would take it from Him. What’s more it lasts eternally. The God who couldn’t stay dead is also the God who makes some very curious promises to mankind. One of my absolute favorite passages in the Bible (Psalm 1:3) says this: “He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.” This idea is repeated in Jeremiah 17:8 and alluded to in Isaiah 61:3 when God promises that believers will be called oaks of Righteousness (this, by the way, the very thing Jesus said had been fulfilled as He read in the synagogue). For the purposes of simplicity, let us assume that the fruit we bear is (at a minimum) the Fruit of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To extend it slightly, we could say that it might also be the salvation of new souls.
How incredibly exciting is it that humankind has the potential to be always bearing fruit? As someone who knows the volume of work involved in producing fruit for 3-6 months out of the year, I can attest that this is a miracle. I also find myself deeply hungering to be the sort of person who can truly be fruitful. But as I strip back the glorious imagery and the flowery promise of the Bible, there is a lot to be found beneath. If we are to really believe the words of God, we must then deal with the ramifications of their truth. Humans do not naturally have the above fruit. We are cranky and selfish and always worried about the smallest things; we cheat and stretch the truth and look out for our own wants first. Humans will protect their own possessions and be jealous of those who have more. We argue about meaningless things, and scrap for the last resources available, as though God couldn’t provide. We are skittish, scared, jumpy, little gremlins- not altogether different from a 2-year-old guarding his firetruck from another child. If you don’t believe, me just remember the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. Incredibly, this is not the purpose of man. Our purpose is to thrive under the life-giving glory of God and bear His fruit. Think of the selfless openness of a great tree with its fruit-filled branches spread wide for all to partake. Like arms open to give and share, the tree will not guard itself from anyone who would come along and pluck this produce. This, ladies & gentlemen is what God promises to us. So how do we get from impishness all the way to a great tree?
Preparation. A great deal of preparation.
As I write to you, it is springtime. In Colorado that is a very risky season, for we could enjoy snow storms as late as June. There will be one day in the 70’s, and the next day will have a blizzard. In fact, the wise learn to distrust the warm still day because it is frequently the sneaky harbinger of an impending storm. And yet, there is an awful lot of great produce to be grown in Colorado. We aren’t like the tropics, which effortlessly produce year-round growing seasons. We have extremes of temperature, crazy wind and scorching sun. We have shadowy mountainsides and varied elevations such that what can be grown can dramatically change over a 10-mile span. This is why gardeners are very cautious in the spring not to put their plants in the ground too early. It is so easy to lose everything to one frosty morning. Yet, come here in the summer and you will encounter a green paradise, not dissimilar from what I always imagined Aslan’s country would be. You see, in the great extremes of the world, God’s grace gives life.
I find it really possible that when God promised abundant life to us, He didn’t picture it for a select few who were already living in ideal circumstances. I can’t imagine that God would reserve his death-defying life for those who were already “hooked-up”. Prosperity need not necessarily be for the wealthy alone. Blessing is not reserved for the materially rich. A healthy family is not merely for families that have been whole for generations. No. God was no fool when he sent us salvation. He knew the world was an uncertain and scary place. He knew that the moment things seemed warm and good that something destructive would come along and take it all away. God knew that there were creatures lurking in the shadows that want to nip off the tops of every thing that flowers. He knew that there would be droughts. The life that God gives us can deal with that.
So what do people do who garden in uncertain places? We prepare.
There are probably places in the world where you can toss a peach pit and come back years later to find a burgeoning tree. But that’s not everywhere. More commonly, growth takes work and not a small amount of it. How can the child of abuse become a healthy person in their adult years? How does someone who was raised in another religion pattern Jesus for their family? How does the survivor of poverty break the cycle and move forward into prosperity? These are not ideal environments for ever-bearing trees. These are places where nothing is ideal at all. Left unattended, individuals in similar circumstances do not thrive. It is like throwing seed onto rocky ground where the roots are shallow and birds descend. It is like throwing seeds into the weeds where they are choked out. Very few things will grow strong and healthy left alone like that. But what idiot of a farmer intentionally sows seeds and leaves them all alone? None who will make a career of growing.
As spring comes, I am becoming so very excited for the season of growth that is to come. There is something that stirs up within me and I am compelled to go outside and get things ready for summer. I imagine this is similar to what a nesting mother goes through right before she gives birth. I can’t help but get things ready. Late into the winter months, I begin to think about what I would like to grow. I assess my garden space, the size of my pots, and the climate of the place I am growing. I initiate my garden by starting seeds inside. These little seeds are nurtured for a month or two before I can even talk about putting them outside. Even so I have to put them in a sunny spot and ward off my cat, who would love to nibble all the tender shoots. The snow can come and the wind can blow, but my sprouts are secure. After a bit of waiting, it starts to get warmer and I have to make a home for my plants. I know that they will not survive forever in the warm window. They need more soil, more nutrients, more space. They need the wind to blow them around a little bit, for it will make them strong and healthy.
So I prepare.
Weeks before the plants will go into the earth, I go out into the garden and take on the space. I do battle for my plants, eradicating challenges before they are planted, so that I can avoid their suffering as much as possible. I cut back old plants that died the fall before. I pull out roots that would hinder growth, pluck up weeds that have dared to take root. I even toss away the odd rock, which went unnoticed the year before. There are even times that I discover cut worms or other dangerous predators that might endanger the future health of my garden. All these things must be dealt with. I till the soil, I prune, I sweep, and I make space for the things that are to come. I heft bags full of manure and spread it over the earth, knowing that as my hands are dirty and covered with filth my plants are healthy inside. It is not uncommon for me to prick my fingers on thorns or to walk through a spider web or to get my fingers dangerously close to a centipede, but I do it for the joy that is to come. My back gets stiff and my hands sore, but it’s ok. I am preparing.
This is the part of gardening that is probably one of the bigger deterrents to those who do not garden. Not everyone wants to spend their weekend with their hands in a pile of poop or their fingers sweeping up moldy spidery deadfall. That is understandable. It’s not the most fun. But. It’s not about the waste or the webs. This is about the miracles that are to come. Gardeners deal with muck for the look on their neighbor’s face when they hand them a jar of homemade pickles. It’s about the steaming pumpkin pie on the family table at Thanksgiving. It is about that sweet raspberry with cream eaten in the shade on a hot summer day. It is about the life that is to come, much like Jesus who endured the cross, scorning its shame.
I know that not everyone will garden, and that’s ok. Some people are too busy. Others are convinced that they have zero ability and therefore don’t try. Even others would rather just go to the grocery store and pick up their produce with very little effort. Now, I might not convince every reader that they need to garden as a spiritual discipline, but I would like to hopefully illuminate a cultural problem by means of this metaphor, which has real implications for the body of Christians the world over. In the spiritual world there is no grocery store. All we have is the garden. Christians cannot outsource the work of God to some big institution that will provide everything to them at a low cost. In the absence of a force of gardeners who diligently clean and tend and sow, the people of the world starve. If the Christians do not tend the earth, many are not fed and death is the tragic result.
Christianity is not like the little red hen, who will not share her bread with those who didn’t help to make it. If that were the case, many more would be starving. Christianity is the miracle of God creating bread with very little and giving it to the multitudes. Much the same, we are told that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers. I may not convince everyone to become a gardener, but even if I recruit a few, the harvest can increase manifold. We need a few more hens, who can humbly do the work it takes to make bread and then share it liberally. God is the one who multiplies the bread.
I will pick on Americans because I am one and because I also battle the gangrenous entitlement and ingratitude of our culture. We have grown so accustomed to prosperity that we have forgotten how much work it took to create. We can get things easily and have completely forgotten how much character is built by waiting. We fail to appreciate our blessings because we have sacrificed little to nothing to enjoy them. We throw away perfectly good food, we discard things that aren’t broken, and yet we are still anxious about our material futures. Now for those of you who have had to scrap to succeed in this world, I am not meaning to criticize you. I am hoping to illuminate the fact that relative to most of the rest of the world, we have it really good. We are prosperous and we have forgotten the value of suffering. I will not say we are lazy, for we “work” really hard. We have, however, lost that pioneer spirit that built America. Because we spend so much energy and time on our crazy demanding jobs, we have very little left to give to the garden. This is where I would like to beg the righteous to listen. Please listen.
Christian people know and feel so deeply the call to share the hope of Jesus with the rest of the world. I would easily grant that most Christians truly wish for the Kingdom of God to come on this earth and a huge percentage of those are attempting to do something in order to further that hope. Many give money, many volunteer, many pray. These are all good and I would no more criticize this than I would have it stop. These are fantastic behaviors and I am so grateful to belong to a people who care so deeply. I gladly stand alongside other believers and am proud to count them family.
But here’s a question: why did Jesus give us the parable of the seed? Why did Jesus warn us about new believers who would be choked out by the worries & cares of life or those who would die for lack of good soil? Do you think that Jesus told us about the weakest of believers and their dark fate in order that we would merely understand why people struggle? Did Jesus let us in on the secret in order that we might despair, or worse become calloused? How could He? The God who is not willing that any should perish would not instruct us about the risks of raising up new believers without having a purpose. God couldn’t have intended that we sow the seeds of the Gospel into an undeveloped field- hard, dry, and full of weeds. No, we must set out to prepare the soil of the field and diligently work to tend it.
Taking the American attitude of quick results and minimal discipline would be like buying a car-load of young plants and just putting them into the dry dirt in the back yard and hoping that they live. Maybe every couple days one sprinkles a bit of hose water over the patch, but that’s about it. This is equivalent to taking your children to church and hoping they get all the teaching they need. This is the equivalent of hand raise salvations with zero follow up. This is exactly the same as street preaching scathing accusations at hurting and lost people with whom no relationship or trust is shared. This is the same as throwing money at a mega church but not greeting visitors who sit by you. Sure, there will be those who can grow and find salvation through each of these circumstances. There will be those hardy souls who God blesses anyway- because He is good and merciful to us. Much like the haphazard garden, where some things might grow, there will always be some results, no matter how marginal.
Nevertheless, couldn’t we do this whole thing better and more efficiently? What if we prepared a little? What if we dealt with barriers to belief before we asked someone for a commitment? What if we fertilized our soil and removed stones? What if we did our best to make sure that the weeds were prevented? If we acted with some effort and a touch of strategy, then we might have a more ideal environment for growing a large and prosperous garden. We the body of Christ DO want a healthy church. We the branches of Jesus’ vine pray for the Kingdom of God to come. Therefore, let us consider the incredible benefits of preparation and the long-term payoff of this disciplined labor. We can’t just throw money at a problem and expect for it to get better- that’s not how the Kingdom of Heaven operates. We are going to have to get our hands dirty. We are going to have to befriend people who are unlike us and love them unconditionally. We are going to have to give grace priority over our political proclivities. We are going to have to learn to love cultures that are not our own, and become experts in hospitality. We absolutely must learn to welcome broken families, non-traditional families and even the leprous singles into community. We must make our time with the Lord a priority and remove the taboo of sharing our spiritual sides with others. We can’t be scared of loving the lost in our own lives. We can’t expect to solve all things quickly. We can’t outsource everything to vocational ministers. It’s not enough. There’s no Walmart solution to the spiritual starvation in this world. The common man has been called to be the vehicle of Jesus’ salvation. Do we or do we not have the hope that the world needs?
God is God of the garden, the beautiful paradise facilitated by the life-giving blood of Christ. When God promises to make us like trees planted by the stream giving fruit in season and out of season, He is implying quite a lot of preparation. Before we can become that, we must necessarily avail ourselves of his pruning hand, of soaking the nutrient-rich water His stream provides, of the strengthening gusts of wind that beat at us. God’s work on we trees is unspeakably practical. While it isn’t always pleasant and it doesn’t happen quickly, it is the most worthwhile process we can undergo, for the fruit of God proceeds from the Tree of Life. Our fruit gives life to generations and feeds the multitudes. Our fruit is God’s delight and His sustenance to a starving world. Please bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Please be savvy gardeners, and please please persist in the slow, the back-breaking, the disciplined honor of tending the garden. Please prepare the soil.
