These have been busy garden days! My spinach and peas have already come and gone. The lettuce is tall and beautiful. The green beans are daily being stored away in the freezer. I harvested my first cabbage two days ago (it was huge and beautiful! I couldn't believe it!). Oh, and the zucchini has started. We have fourteen hills of squash this year. If you didn't laugh out loud at that statement, you've never planted squash before. Trust me, it was an accident! My seeds got left out in the rain so it was either plant 'em or toss 'em! Anyone need zucchini? Come on by!
Gardening makes me think of life in so many ways. When my husband built the high and strong fence to keep the deer out it made me think of the ways we need to protect our children from dangerous outside influences that will attempt to trample and chew up the good that we are seeking to develop in their young hearts. As we cultivated, nourished and tilled the soil it made me think about all the truths and godly disciplines we need to be cultivating in our own lives to make ourselves ready for what the Lord wants to be doing in us. As we carefully planted the seeds the verse from Galatians kept running through my mind. Galatians 6:7~ Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The whole concept of planting a bean seed and expecting a bean plant. Planting good things in our lives and expecting a good return. And of course vice versa. Weeding is such an obvious one. Constantly removing the subtle evils that are constantly creeping into our lives and threatening to choke our life.
A new concept struck me this week. It had to do with my very least favorite part of gardening. Thinning.
It always feels so tragic to me. Pulling up these perfectly good vegetables that have all the potential in the world to grow big, strong and healthy. But if they were all left, they would be so crowded that they would never have the ability to grow any bigger than a pencil. So the necessary evil must occur; some are pulled out to make way for some to grow strong and healthy and actually produce something worth having.
This thought really struck me now as this is exactly were we are in life. There is lots of "good" going on right now. We are busy with many different people doing many different things. Much potential. But it's beginning to be at the expense of some truly important things (such as enjoying our daughter's childhood years) being choked out.
This is really hard! In some regards it feels like "weeding", but it is completely different. We're not talking about throwing out the bad, we're talking about uprooting some of the "good"! It just feels unnatural and wrong. But just as we know that you can't grow so many carrots so squished together so they can't grow, we know that too much good isn't really doing any good at all.
Please pray for wisdom for us as we seek the Lord for direction in how to properly "thin" our lives, and to carefully nourish the places that we know that He is calling us to.
2 comments:
So so true Grace. I just blogged about something similar God's been showing me and was also reading Galations the other day. Those verses spoke to my heart like I had never seen them before!
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from teh flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary. Galations 6:7-9
So encouraging when we can get so tired.
wow I have been trying to apply this concept for the past year.. I met your mother in law Kathy at her bible study last year, and it was SUCH an encouragment!!! I mean it was wonderful to be fellowshiping with these ladies, especialy her, and getting all this wisdom. But in the middle of the bible study I caught myself correcting my toddler, who was playing in the other room, and i realized I wasn't paying attention to them at all while I was there. I did fine with the older boys but with the thrid, he was SUCH a chalenge and God laid it on my heart that I needed to "THIN" out that bible study until I put more time into him and he was "stable" enough to leave playing for an hour and I could be positive he would be good that time.
That wasn't the only thing I had to weed out. I removed almost half the extra unessesary things that would side track me.
But just know that, this is just a season of our life. I feel much better now that I have mostly stayed at home and done nothing else but put my TIME back into my children!!! This is where I belong, hopefully I can start going back to the titus 2 meetings though. I TRUELY enjoyed those!
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