Month: May 2022

Spring Planting

/ pastorpete51 / 6 Comments

Spring Planting – The Farmer

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering his seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. Matthew 13:3-8 ESV

During the winter I used to scan through seed catalogues and plan for spring planting. Then on a blank sheet of paper I would draw the garden and decide where to put the cucumbers and squash and tomato plants. Jesus tells a story of a farmer who like me had decided what seed to plant, where to plant it and the exact day to put them in the soil. He left his house with a bag of the precious seed to begin his day’s work. As he started up the hard path some seed spilled out and as it bounced on the hard ground the birds began to follow him and gobble them up. Once he arrived, he tried to evenly spread the seeds in the furrows but even though the plowed field looked beautiful and clean, underneath the surface there were hidden rocks in some places and thorn and thistle seeds in others.

The same story happens every Sunday in our churches. We all hear the same sermon, but the message has different results depending on how we listen. But our problem is not with the farmer or the seed! The difference at harvest time comes from how our field has been prepared. Before we hear even one more sermon maybe our prayer should be, “Oh Lord prepare my heart!”

The Gardener of Our Hearts

/ pastorpete51 / 4 Comments

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2:8 ESV

What is a garden? Is it defined by rows of roses and peonies; or is it painted on canvas by the brushstrokes of pathways and fountains? The first garden we learn of was filled with all kinds of fruit trees, and the scriptures tell us that God planted it in Eden. Having spent more hours on my knees pulling weeds than kneeling at the altar in church I have learned that the secret of a garden’s beauty lies as much in the walls that surround it and the spaces between the flowers as in any blossom or leaf. Those boundaries say clearly, “This is my garden and that is the field.” Or “The primroses marching across the flower bed are lovely, but they must be pulled out in places, or they will overrun the foxglove and hollyhock. In his poem, “The Mending Wall” Robert Frost wrote, “Good fence make good neighbors.”. Though Frost himself was not in favor of boundaries, his neighbor was, and I have learned that God is also. God is the gardener of our hearts and the one in charge of order. He sets our limits, prunes our overgrowth and transplants us from time to time when He chooses. Like Jeremiah’s image of the potter and clay, we are all in the hands of the Master Gardener of the universe. It will not help us to whine about the gardening He is doing in us today. We must not only trust in His spiritual gardening skills, but we might want to spend some extra time on our knees next to Him in our garden bed of prayer!