Your Garden Beds are Calling

Your garden beds have been worked on now for the last month, right?  Some people are laughing as they roll on the ground at this statement, as others are thinking of the seeds that are ready to plant.  If you garden, then you know that it’s all about the soil. 

Taking a ‘page’ from the bible (Mark 4:1-25), we know that there are different types of soil/ground.  There’s hard and compressed, then there is rocky, there’s thorny and then you have the wonderful, prepared soil that produces good crops.  First words out of Jesus’ mouth when He talks about this is, “Give attention to this!” 

What’s the big deal about dirt?  If your dirt is not worked, replenished and weeded and protected, you’ll have no crop or a small crop.  Sticking with the idea of crops, if I went to the trouble to have planted seed, I’d want to reap a good crop.  Why put any effort into something that wasn’t going to produce for me?  Maybe it’s the sowers fault.  The seed did fall on rocks, areas of no depth of soil, amongst weeds.  Even the birds snatched up what the ‘faulty’ sower planted.  It must be the sowers fault. 

This is a parable that equates the seed with the Word of God.  And what about that dirt?  It’s you…your heart to be exact.  Okay, now we know that I’m in charge of my own dirt. I’ll be wanting to have “well-adapted soil so I can receive and accept and welcome the Word of God and bear much fruit’. 
Who is responsible for well-adapted soil?  Me.  I “hear the Word and receive and accept and welcome it and bear fruit-some thirty times as much as was sown, some sixty times as much, and some (even) a hundred times as much.” 

How do I get this well-adapted soil type in my own heart?  By being not just a hearer only, but a doer of God’s Word.  Often we hear something about the Word of God and think that’s all there is to it.  Now I’m a good Christian.  Jesus said that if we were His disciples we would obey and do what He asked of us (in the Word of God). 

This is the plowing…the stone removing….the weed pulling…being a doer of the Word and not just a hearer only….deceiving ourselves.  Doing what we know is right and going against what is ‘familiar’, and customary or traditional.  When we read in the bible that ‘the Love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit’, then that means you can love the unlovable.  When we read that we are to forgive 70 x 7, then we really can forgive and not hold a grudge, resentment or bitterness. 

It’s about preparation of your soil.  Prepare it with the Word of God and doing what you know is right.  Give the seeds planted in your heart a chance to grow. 

Oh, and if you want to know how much attention you should give this….”And He said to them, Be careful what you are hearing.  The measure (of thought and study) you give (to the truth you hear) will be the measure (of virtue and knowledge) that comes back to you— and more (besides) will be given to you who hear…”

Do you think the dirt’s that important?  Leave a comment or a question.