Summertime must be coming to a close. Carinda has pulled up all the tomato cages and taken down the wire cucumber fence. With Andrew’s help, they got the garden mowed off, to the point that you hardly notice it’s been there.
Of course, our garden is nothing like the garden we had in the good old days. In fact, Crystal has the nerve to giggle behind her fist and openly make fun of the little patch of ground we have tilled up and planted with vegetables the past two years. If I try to see it through her eyes, I guess I can understand. Our whole garden now, is the size of our green bean rows alone, way back when.
But we have grown a pretty healthy garden in our little space this year. It did help that we toted the chicken pen to the garden area last winter and had them contribute a bit more than eggs to the area. I will state here and now, and very loudly, that I do not like chickens! At all! But they did take care of chawing up all the weeds, and their backsides produced enough droppings to make our soil at least three times as fertile, so for that I am grateful.
Remembering all the beautiful plants that grew in our good soil this summer makes me think of a summer long ago….
I am much younger and so are my children. Busy with one of my many household duties (I don’t remember which one because of what ensued) I am startled when Lyndon comes flying into the kitchen, gasping for breath, and yelling for me to come to the garden! Quick!!
He is my oldest son and dons the invisible cloak of responsibility that the oldest child in the family usually wears. I am very familiar with this cloak, as I wore it myself as a child. Anyway, he is very responsible, so I waste no time in following him out the door.
The garden is hidden from view when I exit the back door because the big red shop stands in my way. I hurry across the back yard and around the corner of the shop and I stop short. I cannot believe my eyes. Rivers of red diesel fuel are running between the mounded-up rows in the garden. And a little boy stands there, beside a disbelieving Daddy.
My Lowell is a curious little fellow and he loves to imitate his daddy more than anything in the world. He has watched Andrew many times as he filled the dump trucks and equipment, using diesel from the big off road tank with its fascinating handle.
Today was just a good day for him to try his hand at it. And he was very successful, at least in the pumping of the fuel. The only problem is that he pumped gallons and gallons of it right into my garden!
And what to do about it? There is nothing to do! Andrew and I stare at each other, and then at the garden rows, our faces mirroring the same horrified shock, as that red, oily liquid quickly disappears into the soil that we were hoping to grow good vegetables in. Will anything grow that we have already planted?
The weeks roll around and it is soon evident to anyone with two eyes in their head, that part of our garden is beautiful, taken care of by folks who know what they are doing. But there are a few rows at the upper far end of the garden, close to that diesel tank that really look pitiful. Yellowed, sickly plants grow there, if you could call it that. Mostly they just came up a bit and now sit there, doing nothing. I guess diesel fuel does not have the same fertilizing properties in it that my chickens’ backsides do.
Remembering that day long ago, I have to laugh. I enjoy the memories, especially the ones that were not so funny at the time they were happening!
Reliving that day also makes me think about the soil of our hearts.
Jesus said some hearts that hear his words have hard soil, and his words cannot even penetrate that kind of heart. Other hearts have shallow, rocky soil that take in what he says but the rocks keep his words from taking root and producing anything. Both remind me of the diesel filled garden rows!
Then there is the heart that receives his words, and it grows some nice plants, only to have the thorns of trials and hard times come along and squeeze the life out of it. This heart makes me think of my garden rows that got a lesser amount of the diesel poison. Both my garden rows and this type of heart had a chance to live and grow, to overcome that negative influence. But for various reason, they gave up under pressure.
Then Jesus described the heart with the fertile soil, so much like the rest of my garden. Both went on to produce a great quantity of good fruit.
Now back to my little garden that Crystal makes fun of!! I want to be right like it. Just as it was pecked clean of weeds and fertilized by those chickens until the soil produced a big, beautiful harvest, so I want Jesus to weed out anything unhealthy in my life and fertilize my soil with his word so that I can yield an impressive harvest for him.
Maybe chickens aren’t so bad after all…
My longing, my prayer is that he will do this for every soul that reads these words. Imagine what Jesus could do with us if our hearts were totally weeded and fertilized, ready to produce 100 fold for him!