Sunday, 30 November 2008

• How God is Using My Utter Failure as a Gardener

  Guest post by xapatotheworld

  
  

  I love gardens, and the outdoors, and flowers, and things that grow.  I even like trying to make things grow...but I can't.  I kill just about everything that I plant. 

  Last year, I bought these sheets that were supposed to have seeds in them.  You just lay it down, water, put dirt over it, and then you're good!  Beautiful plants without the hassle in just 4-5 weeks!  I don't know what happened, but somehow, nothing, NOTHING came up. 

  I have relegated myself to bamboo plants and cacti.  I don't have any pets, so I actually name my plants.  I'm one of THOSE girls.  My bamboo plants are Homer (he particularly does well in the banking environment), Sophocles Jr. (a shoot off of Sophocles Sr, who got rootbound and died), Euripedes, and Gamaliel.  My mom recently bought me two more shoots and they are named Buster and Bradley. My cacti, I have three little ones in one pot, are named Larry, Bob, and Alfred, all pretty much shaped like the VeggieTales characters.

  I only have a little apartment and so I just have little pots of plants in my room.  I've been trying to grow some sunflowers and snapdragons all summer.  The first batch of seeds never bloomed.  The second batch...well, I have four great sunflower stalks, but I forgot to water them yesterday and came home to three of them withered and bent in half.

  The point is, I really am not good with plants.  I'm a big appreciator of them, but making things grow is not my forte.  My grandparents and mom are great gardeners, but me...nope.  It has gotten me thinking though about gardening and I like to try to connect everything I can in life with some kind of lesson from God.  I wonder what He's trying to teach me in all this.  It's frustrating to not see any results from my "seemingly" hard work.

  God must be a great gardener.  I say this not just from the evidence physically around me, but from the stories He tells in the Bible.  Jesus Himself used many stories and parables about farming or making things grow.  I have been involved in mission work for a few years now, in one way or another, and I've been connected to the ministry for much longer than that...my whole life, really.  I don't know how many times I, my family, or my friends would invest much time and energy into sharing the Gospel with someone else and never see the fruit. It would be years before anything would come from it.

  Sometimes, the lack of growth seemed like our own fault.  Sometimes it just couldn't be explained (I know that I planted those seeds exactly 5 and 7/8th inches deep, and have watered them with the shower function on my hose for precisely 10 minutes every dawn...why aren't there any sprouts?)  Sometimes the person just couldn't get away from the bad influences around them (ok, remind me never to plant lilies near morning glories...).  Whatever the reason or the occurrence, it is so disappointing to put any amount of energy into a person and not see anything come from it. 

  But really, in life, our parts can be so minimal, but so necessary!  Some people, I have felt that all I did was pour out the extra water from my water bottle onto the ground as I was walking by, but then hear a few years later how that little bit of water was so refreshing, so enticing, that the person pretty much decided right then to pursue Christ, or it was a memory they hung on to until they surrendered to Christ's love.  You never know what your actions will lead to.  God puts people in our lives for a certain amount of time and gives us an amount of influence over them, whatever that influence might be, and we have to take advantage of it.  If we meet someone who is struggling, we have to be willing to step aside and pull a couple weeds from around their base.  If they are sagging, wilting, getting a little crispy around the edge of their leaves, we have to be willing to give up some of our own water to refresh them. 

  God is the One that makes things grow, but we must be willing to help Him.  Some plant, some water, but God brings the harvest.  And with our Brothers and Sisters, we must be willing to help cultivate the beautiful garden that God is growing.  We must weed around us and our local community of brethren so that all of us can grow and continue to become more and more like Christ.  I have no hopes of being a great gardener, but there is much that I can do in the garden of God.

  What is an area in your life where you tried the best that you could, but ended up letting God take over?
  

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