It is late September; it’s time to harvest the carrots, whether they are ready or not.

Recent rains have softened the soil, but that is not enough to encourage the ground to let loose of its treasure. I sit amongst the flimsy fronds and claw around their base. Carefully I scrape away the dirt and mulch, and tear away the ever present crabgrass vines.

Picking ripe tomatoes and cucumbers takes much less effort!

Many of the carrot roots are tiny. Did I plant them too close together? Was I supposed to let them grow for a year? If I plant these again, I will gather more information from experienced carrot growers.

Some of my carrot roots are broken. Did this happen while I was harvesting them, or had some animal eaten them underground? If there is carrot root still in the ground, will it sprout next spring? I will leave this part of the garden unplanted next year, just in case!

I am eager to wash these carrots and have a taste. I have plans to roast them and share them with my family. But for now, I am still in wonder at the effort it took to unearth them.

Is there some gift to the world that lies buried within us, covered in the dirt of our past and the debris of our lives? Will God need to scrape away much of the comfortable space around us to expose that gift, to allow that gift to nourish others?

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly. Titus 2:11-12.

Often, I would like God to manifest Himself in my life without having to change anything. And sometimes He does. Once those tomato plants have reached their prime, their fruit is easily available. But other times, the current situation may need to change. I may need to dig up the ground, scrape off the dirt, and remove the entanglements before I can access the gift God has given me.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1.

Now the carrots are exposed, freed from the soil which held them tightly and the crabgrass entangling them. But they are not clean yet; they are not ready to be put to good use. I still need to rinse them, probably scrub them, maybe parboil them to get them ready. Is God doing this to me, for me? Is God cleansing me of all the dirt and grime in my life, so that I can be put to His good use?

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! Hebrews 9:14.

Sometimes we need to work in tandem with God, clearing away the debris, digging away the layers of dirt, until we expose the treasure buried deep. Only then can we use that good bounty to nourish others and further His kingdom.

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:9-10.

Is there some unrighteous dirt covering the beautiful treasure God has given you? There was a lot of dirt covering the carrots and clinging tenaciously to them. Once they are clean, I will have a feast. God is preparing a feast and wants to add the treasure hidden within you to the bountiful harvest. Won’t you bring your good crop and join Him?

Betsy

Nothing is stagnant in my garden. Everyday something is different than it was yesterday. My basil leaves are beginning to yellow. The bright green leaves are duller today; perhaps the shorter days are causing this. Even their scent seems muted. I love the flavor of basil, so I am going to harvest these leaves while they are still green and make pesto.

One of the many lessons that gardening has taught me is that procrastination is rarely a good plan. Because everyday something is different than it was yesterday. The cucumber you let grow another day yellows and sours. The broccoli you leave for tomorrow blossoms overnight. The basil left a few more days browns and withers. You must watch these plants closely, and act when the time is right.

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6:2b.

What fruit is God bringing forth in my life that I needs to use today? What act of care, what expression of comfort, what word of support needs to happen today?

There may be obstacles in the way. There were in my pesto making. My food processor died, full of half-made pesto. Additional leaves had been cut; I needed to make the pesto that day. My first couple of phone calls went unanswered. Then I remembered my sister who was only in town for a few days, staying at her son’s home. Almost 12 years older than me and living out of town, she and I didn’t have a history of working together on projects. Now we do!

Instead of losing my pesto and my patience struggling with unwieldy appliances, she and I made five batches of pesto and shared an enjoyable time working together. There was more than just pesto made that morning!

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.

I love that the organizers of the Bible titled this section “The Value of a Friend.” As a widow living alone, I could let fear and failure and falling dictate my life. But I don’t. I have friends, and family that are friends, and I am not alone. Even when my problems are comparatively minor in scope, say, a failing food processor, when I work with another, I can have a good reward for my toil.

And the comfort of friendly support and a shared experience is even more treasured than the pesto!

Sometimes the working together is more important than the project. As a task oriented individual, I feel I should tell myself this every day. My relationships are more important than my to-do list. Your needs may well be of greater importance than my plans. I have been put here in this time and place for a reason (Esther 4:15). Perhaps that reason is to be with you right now.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others. Philippians 2:3-4.

I am grateful that my sister was available to help me make pesto before the leaves wilted. I am grateful that someone invented pesto to preserve that wonderful basil taste long after the plants rested. I am grateful that I will get to reap the benefits of my basil in the future, because I acted, with help, at the right time.

Even as much as I will enjoy this pesto in the future, I think the story of how my sister rescued me that morning will last longer. Isn’t that the way with God? What we accomplish may last a while; what He accomplishes lasts much longer, maybe forever.

Do what needs to be done today, but stay open to God including others in your tasks. His plans for you are far more rewarding than your plans for yourself. You may find yourself making memories as well as pesto!

Betsy

The bird netting is down. For me, that declares the end of my tomato season. There are still green tomatoes on the vine, but I am sharing them with the wildlife that calls my backyard home. My last harvested tomato is ripening on my table. Soon it will be a delicious sandwich, my last until next summer.

I struggle a little with not picking every possible tomato from my garden. It feels wasteful somehow. There is a part of me that feels I should gather as much as I can and leave nothing to “waste.” There is another part of me that senses this is greed and a result of scarcity fears. And is it really “waste” to let the animals have some tomatoes? Didn’t God grow plants for them as well?

Interestingly, it is not the squirrels who are eating my tomatoes. Even without the ruby kisses hiding the plants (I have uprooted them), even with the netting down, the squirrels are staying out of the garden. Even I can smell the pungent marigolds over the fragrant tomatoes.

I suspect a deer, even though I haven’t seen one and I live a block off a major road. That my tomatoes could be feeding a deer brings me great joy. Nick was a very successful hunter; deer have fed my family for years. It only seems fitting that I should return the favor, repay the gift in some small way.

When God through Moses established a covenant community agreement with his people, He made sharing the last of the crop law.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyards bear, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:9-10.

I don’t really have any poor or alien peoples in my back yard, nor do I have a big enough garden to invite them in. But I do have wildlife. Birds and bunnies, foxes, coyotes, squirrels and chipmunks, and, apparently, deer. I can share God’s gifts with them.

Can I expand this act of sharing to other areas of my life? Can I live with my hands more open?

Certainly Jesus lived that way. He was not concerned over matching linens or marble countertops. He was not concerned about gathering up as much as He could while He could. When the disciples gave him 5 loaves, He shared it with 5000 people. (Matt, 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6.) He shared His time and His life generously with all people. He instructed us to give to everyone who asks (Matt. 5), not to worry about food and clothing (Matt. 6), and to lay up our treasures in heaven not on earth. (Matt.6).

Jesus call us to practice gleaning, sharing on a universal scale.

What would it look like if we didn’t feel the need to hoard things for our own use? Could I actually share all the clothes I don’t wear with someone who might need them? Could some of the food in my pantry go to Second Harvest? (Great name, by the way!). Could the gleanings from my investment account change a needy person’s life?

Amazing things can happen when we follow God’s directives to share what He has given us.

Boaz was a landowner simply following God’s gleaning laws, when he noticed Ruth, probably the most famous gleaner in the Bible.

She is the Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. She said, “please let me glean and gather behind the reapers.” So she has came, and she has been on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting for even a moment. Ruth 2:6-7

Ruth, the foreign woman working in the field, great-grandmother to King David.

Open your hand today. Share what God has given you. And watch our amazing God at work.

Betsy

I went to pull down the bird netting this morning, and there was a bird trapped inside the netting. Frantic at my presence, she flew to the netting to try to get out.

Since I was taking down the netting anyway, I just went about my business getting it down. Surely she would notice the open sides as the netting was pulled away.

But she didn’t. As I opened up foot after foot of freedom, she flew a few feet in front of me, madly beating at the netting. As I rounded the garden space, she clung to the netting until she was at the end, trapped in the mesh. The entire garden was open. If she had not clung to the netting, she could have been free much earlier.

The bird netting is collected and balled together at the ends. When she reached the end, she became trapped, entangled, unable to free herself. Calmly and softly, and against her loud protests, I cut the mesh away from her. Finally the netting was away from her wings, and she flew free.

Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1.

Do we do the same? Trapped inside a net of bad behaviors, do we cling to what we know, frantic to escape, but unable to see the freedom available to us? Do we seek to escape through the very means by which we were trapped? How many windows must God open for us before we stop banging on the closed door?

I remember a Ziggy cartoon that read: Every time I get depressed about being overweight, I drown my sorrows in a cup of hot chocolate and a box of chocolate chip cookies.

What entanglements am I clinging to instead of trusting in Jesus? Am I looking to Him or trying to save myself? Do I, like the bird, miss the available path to freedom?

The entire garden was open, but this poor bird was trapped in the netting bunched in one spot. My presence with the scissors drew vehement protests, but eventually I cut away the entanglements and set her free.

Has not God done the same for me? Such a life of freedom and joy await, if I can just look away from netting and fly free. When sin has ensnared me, have I complained as God cut away the trap? What great lengths God has gone to in order to free me!

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16.

What joy I felt when the bird finally flew away. The netting was there to protect the tomatoes; I didn’t want a bird entangled and injured by it. My heart was moved as she struggled in vain to free herself. I gave her more and more opportunities to escape, but she wouldn’t take them.  If my selfish heart can care so much for this bird’s plight, how much more must God’s heart ache for us? How He must rejoice when we finally let Him save us!

Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Luke 15:7.

Once the bird flew free, she had her friends and the entire neighborhood at her disposal. Unencumbered by the netting, her options seemed limitless. I would like to think that she would tell her friends that I was a loving human, but I am content that she is free.

What is trapping you today? What is trapping me? God wants to set us free. He does not want to see us die in our sins. He has created a beautiful world for us with seemingly limitless options. Will you let Him set you free?

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36.

Betsy

I thought my garden was over for the year. But just like Lee Corso on Game Day, God is reminding me I don’t have the last say.

Despite record heat, my once wilted tomatoes are showing signs of life. New green tomatoes are growing on the few surviving stalks. I was ready to pull them all up, but wait! Not so fast, Betsy. There is growth here; there is fruit here.

Isn’t God amazing!?! Just when I thought my garden was all dried up and lifeless, there is life! There is fruit!

Perhaps I should be accustomed to God bringing dead things back to life; He certainly has a history of doing so. Yet it always amazes me! Such joy! Such hope! How can pessimism survive in the face of such evidence?

These new green tomatoes on my dying plant remind me that with God all things are possible. If He can create the cosmos with a word and man with a breath, of course He can create new tomatoes on a dying plant. Of course He can revitalize a lagging congregation. Of course He can reunite disputing factions. Of course He can breathe energy into a seemingly hopeless situation. Of course He can!

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21.

I am often ready to give up and move on. Not just with my garden, but with all kinds of things. How many times have I set a deadline and moved on when others did not meet it? Is this efficiency or impatience? Does this tendency indicate practical realism or cynical unbelief?

My parents, German to the bone, managed our family of eight by enforcing strict time frames. If we were to leave at 5, we left at 5, whether you were ready or not. I still get anxious if I know I am running late. I try to be more gracious with others, but I still have to fight the urge to give up and move on when they are not on my schedule.

God is working on this in me. He is not on my schedule. If He has a schedule, He alone sets it. There is a rhythm to life that He has given us based on the rotations of the earth around the sun, but I sense He is not bound by that. Seasons and laws of nature are a gift to us, not a restriction on Him. 

So even though it is late August, I have little green tomatoes on my aging plants. Even though I am a widow in my sixties, I have started a blog and am learning how to write. Even though you may feel used up, tired, and dying, God can produce something new and wonderful in your life.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8:11.

And this life is not merely eternal, it is full and vibrant in the here and now. Life with Christ is like new tomatoes on an old plant. His Spirit within gives me the ability to be patient and flexible in my dealings with others, and with myself. He makes me hopeful and expectant rather than cynical and pessimistic. 

I am so glad I didn’t pull the plants up already. I am so grateful that I had not given up on them and moved on yet. God still had life for them to live. God still has life for me to live. God still has life for you to live.

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10.

Betsy

There is a sense among many Christians today that we are in the end times. My garden is in the end times. The tomato plants have turned brown and wilted. The cucumber leaves are yellowed and curling. No new fruit is evident. Only the flowers and weeds seem to thrive. The carrots have yet to push above the ground; perhaps they never will.

Yes, this is the end times for my garden. And yet, it is not. This is just the end times for this garden. Next year, God willing, I will have another garden. It won’t be exactly like this one; every year my garden is a little different. Every year, some plants flourish and others struggle. Heat waves, droughts, flooding, sudden cold spells – even if I plant all the same things, each year the garden grows in a unique way.

What looks like the end is actually just change. Change can be scary, but it is certainly nothing new. Change may indicate the end of some patterns that we love, but it has yet to indicate The End.

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. Matthew 24:6.

Since Jesus spoke those words, Rome has fallen, the Holy Roman Empire has fallen, the Ottoman Empire has fallen, Russia continues to increase and decrease. Atlas makers cannot keep up with the shifting African nations. Will America fall? History teaches us it is bound to happen at some point or another. But as Christians, we have a dual citizenship. Even if our nation changes radically, even if our nation falls, our status as citizens of God’s Kingdom will not change. His Empire will never fall.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:20.

Yes, our world is changing; so is my garden. My garden is dying; soon it will be dead. For a season. Since I have a longer concept of time than my plants, I know that this is just a time of rest. The garden will be back next year. It will be different, sure, maybe better, maybe not, but this is not the end of all gardening.

Imagine how much larger God’s concept of time is than ours. Eternity. What is 400 years? What is a thousand? What is four thousand? That’s about how long ago God called Abram. Has it been the blinking of an eye for Him? Treasuring every moment as a parent treasures their moments with their children; time seemingly passing so quickly. 

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. 2 Peter 3:8.

So, yes, my garden is ending. Soon I will pull up all the dead plants and let the ground rest for the winter. Soon, these plants will stop taking from the earth and return their nutrients to the soil. This change is not a cause for fear or distress. Perhaps it is a time to examine myself and see where I have put my confidence.

Am I trusting my efforts and my garden to feed me? Don’t I know that God alone can make a tomato grow? Am I trusting our government to eradicate evil in our society? Don’t I know that God alone can overcome evil? Don’t I know that Jesus Christ alone is my savior? 

Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright. Psalm 20:7-8.

If this is the end times, let us take the opportunity today to put our confidence in God and take pride only in His saving grace. If this is just a change of seasons, putting our confidence in God alone will prepare us to embrace God’s gifts in the new season.

May the peace of Christ be with you.

Betsy

I find aging plants fascinating. As the tomato and cucumber plants yield their fruit, their once verdant leaves begin to brown. As the heavy fruit weighs down the branches, the leaves begin to wilt and sag. It seems as if the plant is putting all its energy into producing fruit, no longer as concerned about its appearance.

Of course, it is every bit as beautiful to me as it was as a young plant. As excited as I was to see its growing green leaves, I am more excited to see its ripening fruit.

Do not adorn yourselves outwardly…, rather let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in God’s sight. 1 Peter 3:3-4.

Perhaps this happens to us as we mature as Christians as well. As we focus more on deepening our relationship with God and encouraging the growth of his Spirit’s fruit in our lives, we have fewer resources to give to our outward appearance. Perhaps, at some point, being patient and kind becomes more important than looking younger than we are.

After all, I did not plant those tomato plants to be beautiful plants in my garden. I planted them to bear tomatoes.

I don’t believe God put us in this place and time just to have people admire us. He put us here for a reason: to bear His fruit, to love one another, to further His Kingdom.

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Ephesians 2:10.

How beautiful we must be in God’s eyes when we bear His fruit, when we do His will! This is why He created us, planted us in this place, and provided His food and water for us. So what if our leaves brown and wilt? So what if spots appear and our branches droop? The beauty of young things may encourage us to care for them, but true lasting beauty comes in maturity.

And how convenient that this aging out of the garden comes right as everything else is gearing up. Although that is no coincidence. The school year was set when we were a largely agrarian society. Families needed the kids at home during the growing season; their livelihood depended on the summer crops.

Education, football, volunteer work – all that could wait until the crops were in. So, in the summer, I tend to my garden and swim in the lake. In the fall, I go to Bible studies and committee meetings and watch football. This rhythm is still very ingrained in us, even as we move to year-round school in our post-agrarian society.

When my kids were in school, Nick and I battled the push for year-round school. At some deep level, I appreciate that there are seasons for things. Not every day should look the same; not every month should mimic the month before. Maybe because I have a garden, I appreciate the cycle of growth, production, and rest. Non-stop sameness is a product of industrialization; out of sync with the natural flow created by God.

On a bigger scale, this rhythm and flow, this constant change, is part of our spiritual life as well. There are times of growth, times of production, and times of rest. Even as we honor God in everything we do (Col. 3:17), we have seasons of study, seasons of service, and seasons of quiet communion with God.

And there is beauty in all of it. God sees it, even if others may not.

For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7

So, when I look at these plants, I do not see the browning leaves but the beautiful fruit. When I look at my older Christian friends, I do not see the lines on their faces but the love in their eyes and the smiles on their lips. I pray we can be beautiful in every season.

Betsy