I actually enjoy gardening. I’m
just not very good at it. It is satisfying
to me to see plants neatly arranged, growing healthily and providing their flowers
and fruits (or vegetables). My
grandfather was a gardener as a hobby, probably because he grew up as a farmer
by necessity. He enjoyed grafting different
plants onto one another. He always had a
greenhouse and had different flowering cactuses.
The reason I’m not good at gardening is I don’t seem to ever have time
for it. Maybe we have too many other hobbies
to find time for it. I do know that dirt
is really important. The soil must be
fertile otherwise it will be really difficult for a plant to grow well. The healthier the soil and replenished it is,
the better the plant grows. Here in Florida,
the soil is terrible. There is a reason no
one settled here except in the last 100 years.
The soil is sand with a little bit of dirt mixed in. It’s not good for growing food.
The Lord started what a man once referred to me as “an experiment with
man gone wrong” in a garden. (I find
that view incredibly hopeless. If I am
an experiment, then what purpose is in that.
God says He created everyone for His purposes.) Genesis 2:8-9,15 tells us, “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He
had formed. And out of the ground the
Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. … Then
the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” (NKJV)
Mankind started in a garden and it was his responsibility to tend it
and keep it. In that garden was good and
evil. Every day, from the beginning, mankind
has had a choice in whether to choose the instructions of God and live life
walking with Him, or to choose against the instructions of God and die. Every man has chosen to die, except
Jesus. Jesus came in the flesh (1 John
4:2) and did not sin (1 Peter 2:22). He
chose to live, yet He died so that all who had chosen to die could choose to live
again.
Like a potted plant that must be re-potted so there is new nourishing
soil for the plant to thrive, we need to be re-potted in fresh nourishing Words
of God. A warning to this is noted in
Job 8:13-19: “Blossoming flowers look great before
they’re cut or picked, but without soil or water they wither more quickly than
grass. That’s what happens to all who
forget God — all their hopes come to nothing.
They hang their life from one thin thread, they hitch their fate to a
spider web. One jiggle and the thread breaks,
one jab and the web collapses. Or
they’re like weeds springing up in the sunshine, invading the garden, spreading
everywhere, overtaking the flowers, getting a foothold even in the rocks. But when the gardener rips them out by the
roots, the garden doesn’t miss them one bit.
The sooner the godless are gone, the better; then good plants can grow
in their place.” (MSG)
Have you forgotten God today? “No”
you say? Was there a time in your life
when you were closer to God than you are today?
Almost everyone I know will answer yes to that question. If so, what have you forgotten about God
today?
Make specific and intentional steps to revive your heart and return to
the intimacy you have had with God before.
“Re-pot” yourself into new soil.
Establish new habits and new prayers.
Find someone to hold you accountable to read God’s Word. Choose to live again.
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