Your Life is a Pile of Dirt
Have you ever gotten more than you bargained for…in a good way?
This year was my first year experimenting with the greenhouse that came with our new home. It went pretty well. We got a lot of tomatoes. And I mean a lot. I have tomatoes coming out of my ears.
In fact, there was a week in early September that, had you merely crossed my path, you would have been the recipient of a freshly picked pint of cherry tomatoes.
I hoped to have a decent amount of tomatoes based on what I planted, but something happened that I didn’t expect. A few weeks into the season, tomato plants started popping up in the greenhouse where I didn’t plant them. In between my very meticulously planned and spaced out tomato plants were different tomato plants popping up that I didn’t plant.
I had no idea where they came from. And no, I didn’t drop of packet of seeds.
I didn’t have the heart to pull them out – at least not all of them. They looked so determined.
That and they were now officially miraculous to me since I had no idea how they got there.
All summer, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a story in the Bible. Not surprising, I’m sure, but it’s a Bible story that frustrates me. (If you’ve hung around this blog for a while, you know I don’t hide my Bible struggles.)
The story goes like this:
“A farmer went out to plant some seed. As he scattered it across his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun, and since it didn’t have deep roots, it died. Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so they produced no grain.”
Here’s the kicker…
“Still other seeds fell on fertile soil and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted.” (Mark 4:3-8 NLT)
Time out, Big Guy.
You can’t grow things you don’t plant. It just doesn’t work like that.
See, the reason it frustrates me is I’m a math monster and an accountant by trade. 1 + 1 always equals 2. And debits always equal credits. If they don’t, it’s wrong and broken. The end.
So, no God, I can’t plant 10 tomato plants and then get 20. It. Doesn’t. Work. Like. That.
Which leads me to two possible beliefs I can have about my extra tomatoes this year.
Either
1. The prior owners, who last used the greenhouse 2 summers ago, planted tomatoes that ripened, fell to the ground, degraded, and the seeds sprouted some 600 days later
or
2. God miraculously sprouted tomatoes in my greenhouse so I could write this blog
I haven’t decided which I’m voting for yet.
The interesting thing about the farmer story is that it’s commonly referred to as “The Parable of the Farmer”, when really it has nothing to do with the farmer. The farmer’s just throwing out all the seeds in all the places. What’s different in the story is the soil.
Some of the soil produces a crop and some doesn’t.
In real life, 2,000 years after the story was told, imagine you are the farmer. And imagine the seeds are what you want to thrive in your life. It could be your career, business, marriage, children, money, or your greenhouse in your backyard on the side of a mountain in Idaho (speaking hypothetically, of course).
Imagine the soil is the life you build for that thing that you want to thrive.
If you put that thing you want to thrive on crappy ground, it’s not going to do very well. Buuuut if you put it on good soil (ahem, a life built on God), you might get more than you even put in.
You might even get an illogical amount back. #cringe
So whatever that thing is that you want to grow and thrive, I’d suggested throwing it up to God and seeing what happens. Tell him what you want. Tell him what you need. Ask him for help.
Then listen.
He’s not a yelling God. He’s not going to condemn you. If the voice you hear back sounds yelling and condemning, it’s not from God. Promise. (If that happens, DM me…we’ll talk.)
What’s the worst that could happen?
And now that I think of it, I might have actually prayed over my greenhouse in May this year, so maybe I do know how the tomatoes got there…
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