Proper Soil

As we begin our installment of the gardening blog this morning, I'll have you know that I have a little expertise, so little that I'm not even sure how to spell the word, and no formal training in the gardening arts. However, be that as it may, I feel well prepared to make sweeping and pontifical statements about the matter at hand. Every plant needs the proper soil to grow and produce its fruits. Some plants, such as the asparagus officinalis, grow nearly anywhere and are quite impossible to eradicate. These are properly called 'weeds'. Others, such as the succulent, lovely, tasty, and altogether desirable fruits that a person really wants are as difficult to grow as the weeds are to destroy. Without the proper soil base only weeds grow and mature...over and over again. The best way to overcome all of this in our area is of course to level the soil in the gardening plot, and then build a greenhouse on top of it where the proper soils can be imported into raised boxes and irrigated by a drip system.

Okay, that's it for the gardening blog. Sort of. Gardening or farming works quite well as metaphor and analogy for the Christian life. Weeds stand for sin so well because they are related from the start, that is Genesis and the fall of Adam. The more difficult things to cultivate, love, hope, peace, patience, and the other fruits of the Spirit grow in us seemingly like that fruit tree that refuses year after year to produce much of a crop. So many factors go into a successful garden that we cannot but help make the comparison with how difficult it is to be like Jesus. Fail to read the Word on a regular basis and it is like trying to grow a good plant in bad soil. No prayer or Christian fellowship and we are like that plant trying to grow without watering, a method I have experimented with from time to time in my gardens. Constant weeding is necessary in life to keep the little sins from growing into large 'weeds' requiring heavy tools and intervention to remove. On and on they roll; is it any wonder Jesus used farming a lot in His lessons?

Have a great spring, or almost spring, as we grow in Christ!

Bucky