A friend and gardening mentor told me when I first ventured
into this labor of love called gardening that this hobby should be relaxing.
“If it’s stressful,” he told me, “you’re taking it too seriously.”
His words echo in my ears as I stare at the freshly plowed
ground, that chore the courtesy of a friend kind enough to break up the soil
for me.
It happens every year: “Can I do this? Do I really want to
start with the planting, the cultivating, the weeding?”
You see, my garden can be more fickle than the junior high
tease who can’t decide on a boyfriend.
One year I had the juiciest corn I had ever chomped my teeth
into; the next year, nary a one was fit to eat. One year my lettuce was green
and leafy; the next year it was wilted from the beginning. One year my tomatoes
could have been models for seed catalogs; the next year you would have thought
they were throwback maters from the Dust Bowl days.
And so I gaze upon my plot of unearthed earth and wonder,
“How will she treat me this year?”
The words of the punk rock band, the Clash, ring in my mind:
“Darling you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?”
My gardening friends agree that the hardest part of
gardening is weeding: It’s constant; it’s continual; it’s consuming.
And I agree with them, mostly.
But, for me the most difficult part is taking the leap of
faith to do it, that step into the abyss that is a question mark of IF: If my
garden will grow; if it will produce; if it will give back.
Planting requires a step of faith, for without faith, we
would never start.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
But, the Scriptures also remind us that, “faith without
works is dead” (James 2:17).
My friend is right: If gardening becomes stressful, something
is out of balance. And some of the labor---like preparing the soil, tilling it,
watering it, and weeding it---is evidence of faith in action and not a worrisome
or unnerving affair.
So as I stand there at a distance, pondering, I step toward
my garden, believing I hear her calling me. How she treats me this growing
season has as much to do with me as her. The question of, “Will she produce?” is
also a question of, “How much will I invest?”
It’s the law of sowing and reaping: “Whatever a man sows,
that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7)
Sowing and reaping aren’t easy. I’m on my knees when I
plant, getting down and dirty, pulling and tugging at weeds as I talk ugly to
them, sweating through the whole ordeal, and in the end, I plop down,
exhausted.
And relieved of stress.
I saw a picture in a magazine of a middle-aged couple
gardening. They are laughing as they kneel in the garden together, clothes
apparently freshly laundered, no wrinkles, every hair in place, a perfect picture
of pleasantness.
That’s not my experience. Gardening is a messy, dirty work
for me. I strain, I sweat, I struggle.
But I also do that when I write a sermon or a column, or
invest a part of my life in others.
Like gardening, it’s a messy, uncertain business.
But I cherish it.
For I as I work, I am hoping for something.
The harvest.
It’s there, hidden in the ground, waiting to come forth.
And so, I step into the dirt and begin.
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