Life is like a garden... PDF Print E-mail
Written by Bill Morris   
Thursday, 16 October 2008 08:03
I was thinking about gardening, a past-time that has long been an interest to me.  I caught the interest long ago from my father and both grandfathers who all had vegetable gardens when I was a boy.
 
It's hard work starting a garden.  You have to dig the soil, remove weeds and rocks.  You may need to add gypsum to break up the clay, or mulch and manure to give the soil a nice loamy, friable (crumbly) texture.
 
Then you plant the seeds or seedlings.  You have to watch out for frost, or snails and other pests that will destroy the young tender plants.  You have to add fertiliser occasionally and treat the growing plants for disease and infestation of pests.  You have to weed between the plants and prune unwanted leaves or branches.
 But there are some things you have no control over. God sends the sun and the rain to germinate the seeds and cause the seedlings to develop.
Then we reap the harvest.  We can keep the harvest to ourselves if we are selfish or we can share it with those around us, especially the needy.
 
You know, life's a lot like a vegetable garden, not a box of chocolates at all...sorry Forrest.  Because unlike the box of chocolates, we decide what effort we will put in.  And what we put in, we get back multiplied, just like the one seed in the garden produces much fruit or other usable produce.
 
So it is, if we aren't careful, we don't prepare the soil of our lives properly for the roots to grow to draw nourishment from the soil.  Or we allow a lot of weeds to grow and the good plants can't thrive in that environment. Or we don't prune out the bad bits of our lives and let them grow and draw nourishment away from the good fruit.
 
You see we need to work on all aspects of life; the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual aspects.  There's a popular new-age word "holistic". It's just a fancy way of saying "the whole of". It's really a word I could use here.
 
And you know how you do it? We do what we can do but remember the things I mentioned that we have no control over, you know, the sun and the rain. Hasn't that been brought home with the recent weather!
 
Jesus said: But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.  (Matthew 6:33).  If we haven't started already, then maybe we need to begin to prepare and plant our life's garden carefully or we're gonna have weeds for dinner. :)