I have fond memories of my family’s abilities and habits of gardening, especially when I consider the expense of good produce. When Mom planned salads for supper through the summer, we simply stepped out the back door, grabbed some lettuce and a tomato or two, and prepped it in minutes. It’s easy to think how good we had it “back then,” but it’s also only part of the story.
As much as I might miss those days of making quick and easy salads or nabbing strawberries along the walkway through our backyard, I really don’t miss the says of making and maintaining the compost pile at the back of our yard, especially when we were raising rabbits. I don’t miss cutting, planting, and hilling potatoes – or pinching potato bugs! I don’t miss the nights we were allowed to stay up past bedtime so we could help husk a pickup-truck load of corn or prep it for freezing.
And that was the “easy” part! My Dad and grandmother took care of most of the hard work. For as good as I had it when I was a kid, there was an awful lot of planning, preparing, and doing that went on behind the scenes that I conveniently “forget.” There were also times when all that preparation and effort produced nothing, or at least not enough, whether because of a lack or overabundance of rain, hungry deer or raccoons, or some other unknown factor. The unfortunate, often forgotten truth of gardening is that growth requires effort but effort doesn’t always produce growth.
Jesus revealed that difficult truth about our life and work in God’s kingdom. While teaching the crowds of people who followed him, Jesus told what we usually call “The Parable of the Sower,” which might be better understood as a parable about soil. Jesus said:
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:3-9)
Jesus said, “Listen up! This is important!” Very simply, Jesus acknowledged that you can put effort into planting seed, but that doesn’t guarantee a specific outcome. Sometimes the soil is unproductive. Sometimes the circumstances make growth short lived. Sometimes there’s a crop, and sometimes it’s a bumper crop. What’s the difference? If we dig into Jesus’ teaching, we find that the key factor of growth and production is the health of the soil, the receptivity of those who hear the Word of God. The sower cast the seed everywhere, but the seed would grow only where it could take root and be nourished.
The bottom line is that we can’t force growth; we can only prepare for it and tend it, and that happens only when we get dirty. As Paul reminded the early church: we plant and water, but only God gives growth (1 Corinthians 3:6-8). What kind of soil are we, either as individuals or as a body? Are we a beaten-down path where the Word of God gets snatched away? Are we rocky soil where there’s only shallow, unsustainable growth? Are we thorny soil where growth is eventually choked out by other concerns? Or are we soil where life not only takes hold but reproduces? Honestly, I don’t think it matters, if we’re willing to get dirty and break up hardened soil, dig out rocks, and do some weeding. If we do that and keep on planting the Word and tending one another, God will prompt growth, whether a little or a lot.