One of the things I love about gardening is how every time I work the ground God impresses so many of His truths into my heart. The Old Testament uses farming metaphors on several occasions and then, fittingly, Jesus speaks in terms of fields, farms, fruits, soils, seeds, and sowers over and over again.
Yesterday, I began building a raised garden bed for the upcoming spring gardening season. Seeing as how I was fresh off my reading of Brett Markham’s “Mini Farming” book, I set out to perform certain soil preparation technique called “Double-Digging.”
This method, has you dig out a trench the length of your raised bed, placing all the dirt you just dug into a wheelbarrow and then off to the side, and then filling the trench with fresh compost. Another trench is then dug next to the first one with the new soil being placed on top of the compost that had filled the first trench. This process then continues for the width of the bed until the wheelbarrow full of dirt is used to cover the compost in the final trench.
After performing this labor on my small garden bed, two things rang true in my mind.
1- I should have stretched my hamstrings a little first (I could barely make it up our stairs last night)
and
2- Preparing good soil is HARD WORK. Trenching, composting, digging, moving dirt, etc… it is hard on the back, hard on the legs, and hard on the arms.
But the soil… it is incredible. What was once a sandy looking 40 square feet of dirt is now a 20 cubic foot box of dark brown, soft, loamy soil, the type that every gardner covets… the type that just looks ready to receive new seeds.
As I said in the beginning though, I don’t just enjoy gardening for the sake of the fruits and vegetables… I enjoy it for the truths that God presses into me as I work the ground. After this experience, I was left thinking about the parable of the sower. This time, however, I was shown a side to this parable that I hadn’t seen before. This time, God pressed into my heart… how hard He works to prepare good soil.
In this parable, which can be found in each of the three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks of a sower who sows seeds in four places, each of the four environments yields a different result, with the best being the Good Soil… the soil from which a harvest up to a hundred-fold was reaped. Jesus goes on to explain that the seed is the Word of God, and that the good soil is those of us who hear the word and accept it. While I have heard and read this parable several times in my life but this time, in thinking about this parable, I started to wonder…
What, or who, makes us into good soil?
In Colossians 2:8-15, Paul says that it was “while we were dead in our trespasses.” That God made us alive in Christ.
In Deuteronomy 9-10, Moses reminds the Israelites that it is not because of their righteousness that God is bringing them into the promised land, for they are a stubborn people, and in Hebrews 12:2, we are told that it is Jesus Himself who is the author and perfector of our faith.
Paul even tells us in Philippians 1:6 that it is “He who began a good work in us who will bring it to completion.
While we can easily see, both in life and scripture, that is good soil that springs forth good, fruit-bearing trees, we also see that the whole of Scripture seems to have this theme flowing through it that says it is God who prepares the soil, God who causes the seed to take root, God who grows the tree, God who prunes, & God who enjoys seeing the fruits of His labor in us.
Which brings me back to my raised bed and the truth that God pressed into me as I toiled…
God works hard on us
How many of us can actually say that we prepared ourselves to receive His word? As Paul says in Galations 3; “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (Galatians 3:2), and was or is our reception of the Spirit, or the fact that we have been found to be good soil a work of our own? It can’t be! How many Christian testimonies start with “well I had never heard anything about God or Jesus but I had spent years preparing myself for when that day came so that once I finally received the Word I would believe and bear much fruit” (If this is your story please let me know because you are the first of this nature I have ever heard of).
Instead, we hear time and again about how some life circumstances, some seemingly “random” chain of events, and even some persistent sower all seemed to “miraculously” align at just the right time in our lives to lead us to a place of realization of who we are before God, and who He has called us to be in Him.
in looking back, we can see that it was God who was arranging the life circumstances, sequencing the chain of events, and even leading the sower to sow the seeds of His Word into our hearts. It was God who was breaking up the hard soil of our hearts, digging the first ditch, breaking up the subsoil, filling the first ditch with compost, and then repeating the process all over again.
Then, we can go out, double dig ourselves a little garden bed, pull a hamstring, sit down, watch a sunset, and realize, with great appreciation.
God works hard on us… Preparing our hearts to be Good Soil… Soil ready to receive His Word.
