Garden

Here it is.... the planted garden.
At this point, it represents POTENTIAL.
Nothing realized yet, but hopeful.
Hopeful for a harvest.

• You break up the HARD soil.
• You plan the best places for each plant for it to flourish.
• You provide everything so the plant can flourish.... fertile soil, water, protection from pests...

but it is ultimately up to the plant.
NOW WE WAIT....
AND, lest I forget, during the waiting for the harvest, is the constant care.
weeding, keeping out the pests, watering, providing the support of the tomato plants.

Every time I work in the yard/garden, the biblical parallels are overwhelming.

Planting a seed involves risk. In the hand, the seed is only potential.
It is only as you take the risk, place it in the soil and it dies that the potential is realized.

You've got to get on your knees, you've got to get your hands dirty. And that effort can yield a harvest... "a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." (Matthew 13:23)

I know that I'll be battling the thistles. I love Jesus' teaching in Matthew 13 about dealing with thistles and weeds.

Psalm 85:11-13 (NIV)

The LORD will indeed give what is good,

and our land will yield its harvest.

Psalm 107:37

They sowed fields... that yielded a fruitful harvest;