Hey, Church!
Not long after the COVID lockdown began a little over two years ago, I picked up a new hobby and started a small fruit and vegetable garden in my backyard. At times it has been more rewarding than I had ever imagined and, at other times, it has been deeply disappointing. The process of burying one tiny little bell pepper seed in soil and seeing it grow up to produce veggies you can actually eat is an amazingly gratifying experience! But when those veggies you worked so diligently to nurture are eaten down to the stem by the resident iguana mafia before you are able to harvest them for yourself, it might drive you just a little bit insane. One who has experienced such a violation might, hypothetically, buy a pellet gun and form an alliance with like minded neighbors to ensure that no quarter be given, nor mercy be shown, to any trespasser belonging to that savage race of reptilian pestilence.
After years of cultivating, and making mistakes, I am only now beginning to see the fruit of my labor. But, as it turns out, the garden has had more to offer my family than the food we can pick off the vine all along. Even when a plant or tree has failed to produce as desired, every element between the sun and dirt has borne an abundance of knowledge about the character of our God.
Take, for example, a sweet potato. Did you know that you can buy one at the store, nestle it on its side in some soil, and with enough water, sunlight, and time, see it reproduce indefinitely? I laid this (dead!) potato in the soil just a few weeks ago and, as you can see, it’s beginning to sprout. The leafy stems you see coming up are called “slips” and each one may be removed, transplanted, and ultimately grown into an entirely separate potato-producing plant!
I failed four or five times before this one took root. When I first spotted the chutes coming up, I was like a little boy on Christmas morning. I ran inside and called to the family, hurrying them out the back door to behold the glorious sight: LIFE! Such a simple thing, a sweet potato doing what God designed it to do, was preaching messages of hope, perseverance, faith, joy in God’s creativity, and resurrection from the dead.
Or consider the banana tree that I planted before COVID as a three-inch-tall seedling. Personally, as much as I hoped it would someday produce bananas, the beauty of its large green leaves and its reddish-pink trunk was enough for me to count it a happy blessing in our yard. But then, two weeks ago, it started to bloom. Today, it looks like this:
It was enough that the tree, without its fruit, was beautiful. The fact that it now produces something delicious to eat is truly astonishing. But the additional fact that God made it bear fruit that looks like that–more stunning than any flower–preaches the longsuffering goodness, kindness, and generosity of our God. Who could imagine something so beautiful blossoming from something buried in the dirt for three long years? His affection for us is so great that even our food is a sermon wrapped in a divine work of art.
I could say the same of the peppers, zucchinis, squash, cashews, tomatos, oranges, green beans, coconuts, and every other seed that has died and (in most cases, anyway) risen again in my own backyard. It is such a delight to see because that story–the promise of the gospel–is what every human heart longs for. When everything in our world goes to compost and all hope appears to be dead in the dirt, we can remember that our Creator-Redeemer God has promised, “Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.” (Ps. 126:5-6)
Put your hope in Him!
Your brother,
Ryan