Doubt

I didn’t want to post this picture. It is a picture of flaws and failings. It is a picture of what my sugar snaps look like right now. Not what I want them to look like, but what they actually look like.

God uses flawed and failing people to do wonderful things. He could just do them Himself, but He works through us instead. Hopefully, God can use my flaws and failings as well, because those sugar snaps look like failure to me.

I seem to remember having sugar snaps to eat by this time in the past, but the plants are too immature this year. They are barely taller than the weeds. Will I be able to harvest some of the delicious fruit? I don’t know.

A garden is an act of faith, just like the Christian life. I’m doubting right now.

If a garden has taught me nothing else, it has taught me I am not its master. There are too many variables outside my control.

How much can I do, really, to guarantee a harvest of sugar snaps?

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring…. Instead, you ought to say, “if the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. James 4:13-16

I want to “fix it.” I want to make the garden do what I want it to do. I want those sugar snaps tall and healthy and producing fruit right now. Shall I stomp my foot? Do you think it would help?

Sigh. Of course not.

Has it ever helped?

There are things beyond my control. Many, many things. Most things. Family, friends, pets, wildlife, trees, and my sugar snaps. I can influence them, but I am not in control of them. I love them too much to beat them into submission. So instead I will encourage them.

I will continue to go out every day and talk to my plants. I will water them and encourage them to cling to the support provided. I will be patient.

I am going to have faith that I will get at least some sugar snap harvest. There are plants, and they are growing. Nature is God’s non-verbal expression of His love, and God and nature operate on their own schedule, not taking my plans into account. This is how it needs to be. God, being God, has a much better vision of what and when than I do.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

I take comfort from the Jesus’ parable of the sower told in Matthew 13 and Luke 8. Even if the seed has escaped being trampled on or eaten by birds, even if it has grown deep roots in good soil and overcome the thorns, even when it has brought forth fruit, the results vary.

Other seed fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty. Matthew 13:8

Maybe this is just a “thirty-fold” year. It may even be a year of no harvest. Maybe I just need to not compare this year to other years, or this garden to other gardens, or myself to other people. Or, as my yoga and stretch teacher says, keep my eyes on my own mat.

Keep my eyes on what God is growing in this garden right now. Love on these sugar snaps and be grateful for them. Rejoice in their growth and give thanks for whatever they may yield.

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God for you. I Thessalonians 5:18

Will I get a sugar snap harvest? I’ll keep you posted.

Betsy

Restore a right spirit within me, O lord. Psalm 51:10