Noisy-bag mulch and compost tea…
…all the ingredients to the making of great soil, right? Rich in nutrients. All you need is to plant some seeds, water, and keep the ground free of weeds. After a short time, you will reap a yield of delicious fruit or breathtaking flowering plants.
If only it was that easy…
Did you know that our hearts are likened to ‘soil’ in the gospels? This afternoon, the Intervarsity staff and a couple returning students met to share and pray before the start of the semester Monday. Co- team lead Jamie Miller shared out of Luke chapter 8, “The parable of the sower’. Here, Jesus masterfully brings together well-known physical principles with the spiritual reality of our relationship with God. For just as the sowing farmer spreads seed over different terrain, so does the Father ‘plant’ His word in our hearts.
Now I have a little garden on the side of my house, and last Spring I was on a mission. This was my first real garden, and I had lofty dreams of tomatoes, corn, beets, peppers, and even juicy red grapes. Every morning before the sun was hot in the sky, I was out watering the plants. What I didn’t realize, however, was the crazy amount of work that was required to produce the harvest.
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.”
Boy do I know the sobering reality of that claim…
Everyday, I battled weeds. Those freeloaders leeched the ground of resources. I think of them as plant- bullies. A particularly wicked type was the formidable Burning Nettle. Just a graze on bare skin would leave you with a maddening, relentless itch which lasted for hours.
Isn’t this the same principle with our heart?s Must we not constantly siege against the cares of this world; finances, career, status, circumstance, tests, homework, relational drama which choke out the Truth of God’s peace? Mustn’t we ceaselessly keep our soul in check during hardship lest our goodness and kindness wilt?
Toil is inevitable to get the fruit. ((Its all about the fruit)). Whether it be a mouth watering tomato or love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (Galatians 5:22). We must know there is work to be done to get there.
One last note. And this is key. Miss this and all the work and toil aforementioned will be done in vain. The list of ‘fruit’ Paul talks about in Galatians (quoted above) are coined ‘the fruit of the Spirit’. The fruit is not a direct result of our efforts, beit resisting temptation; steeling our minds against the fusillade of worries, stresses, and doubts; trudging through debilitating emotional wounds of the past. The list goes on. No, fruit is a product of God, just as edible fruit is a product of the miracle of creation (the transformation of seed, sun, soil and water into a tomato for example). Our efforts are only a catalyst to the end result. A necessary catalyst, but only a means to an end, not a end in itself.
God wants to produce an incredible yield of fruit in our lives. Even more, he wants to work with us in removing the thorns in our hearts that threatens to choke out that fruit. Let us not toil in our own strength. Doing so we miss the point that God alone produces true, genuine fruit. All we can manufacture is artificial fruit that some people keep out in bowls , only good for decoration.
