A gardener, this is not me.  If you know me you know how much a loathe gardening.  I sneeze, welt, itch, and just downright miserable.  However, God is slowly showing me his truths through this garden.  Greg and I inherited this beautiful, well, loved garden.  I’m learning how not to kill it!  No seriously, it’s a mess.  The weeds are never ending.  The flowers are entangled in the weeds.  It’s never ending.  Ugh!  As I have tried to keep up with the weeds God is teaching me in the pit of weeds.  

First, as a gardener, you need to know what is a weed and what is a flower.  I’m getting better at picking out the weed when it’s small versus taking over the garden.  God is showing me that is like my sin.  I first must recognize what is sin and what is fruit.  The more I grow in the Lord the more I recognize my sin.  Sin never stops coming just like those weeds in my garden.  But they are lot easier to manage when you can recognize them right away.

Second, preventing the weeds from coming up is huge!  This spring I have been on a mission to ‘over’ bark my planters!  We are getting ready to leave for the summer so I wanted to put protection on them.  The bark will keep the weeds down, but it is not a substitute for the gardener.  Just like attending church, reading books, listening to speakers, fellowship with believers are all important, but they is no replacement for God’s word.  His word will get to the root of the problem.  

Third, it takes time to garden.  The hours upon hours I have spent on the garden is still not enough to get it perfect. It will never be.  The more time I spend, however,  the more beautiful it becomes.  The fruit is incredible to eat and the flowers are appealing to the eye.  I desire for the fruit in my life to be like this.  I want it to be pleasing to His eye.  Someday I will be perfect with my Lord and Savior.  Until then I’m learning to will enjoy my time communicating with Holy Spirit in the garden.

Just for fun here is the progress Greg and I have made on just this planter in the past few weeks!  I hope I can maintain it over the years.

-Chris