Avoiding Fern and Wild Mushroom Salad

Have you ever considered--Dear Reader—the purpose of a garden? In my case, it is to nurture herbs and veggies and pretty little flowers so that I can eat 'em or smell ‘em or look at 'em. Sometimes, it is even all three. Each plant has an ultimate purpose to me, yeah? The basil, thyme, and mint will go into an omelet or on top of some chicken baking in the oven or into a gallon of freshly brewed iced tea. The Four O’clock, Hibiscus and yellow roses live to make me smile when I look at their beauty. (Yellow flowers are my favorite. They just make me happy, ya know?)

Each day, I nurture my garden. I water the plants at about the same time every day. I have chosen the evening because I want to allow the water I shower upon this foliage to be as useful as possible. Water is completely and totally necessary for the life of a plant. You cannot just throw the seeds on the dirt and never water them and then expect them to live and flourish, can ya? If--by some chance--they actually germinate, they will be tiny, weak, pale, little plants who don't produce much of any worth. That outcome for my plants is in total opposition to the ultimate purpose I have for them. Therefore, I do what I can do to nurture them and to give them every opportunity to grow into what they can be--tall, green, beautiful plants from which I can harvest enjoyment.

While I water, I look in the dirt which surrounds my precious little plants to see if any weeds have popped up. When I first began noticing these nefarious, green beings, I wasn’t sure if I should pull them or not. Having never had a garden before, I wasn’t sure what the “purposed” plants ought to look like. What makes it worse is that these little sprouts coming up out of the ground are kind of pretty. I almost feel a little badly when I pull them out. Even the wild mushrooms provide tiny feelings up guilt when I wrench their roots out of the dirt. Those pests grow faster than anything else I know! If I don’t uproot them regularly, I may end up eating fern and wild mushroom salads for dinner at the end of the summer instead of tomatoes, zucchini, squash and cucumbers. For the very reason that I am certain I would hate a fern and mushroom salad, I daily spend several minutes of my garden time picking these annoying things out of the dirt and throwing them as far away from my plants as is possible. The deal about weeds is that they take some of the water and fertilizer and energy from the dirt. This energy is designed to be used by the plants to grow them into their ultimate purpose. It is really important for me to get those weeds outta there--cuz if I don't, the plants I WANT to grow into something tall and beautiful will stay small and weak and ugly. If I let the weeds grow, my precious plants will die eventually. So, I spend some of my time every day, digging up those cursed interlopers.

In the mornings, I go out to my garden to collect whatever herb I've decided I want to use in my breakfast omelet. While I'm there, I do a little bit more nurturing. Often I choose my omelet herb by noticing which herb needs to be thinned. Thinning the herbs is very important as it allows the remaining stems to grow larger and more useful. I'll have ya know that watching a plant whose leaves were tiny--say 1/8th of an inch--grow to 2 inches in length is really kind of rockin’ cool, ya know? When I see them grow because I took care of them, I feel accomplished. (I really like learning new things—and I especially like being good at said new things!) And, in the end, helping these herbs to grow helps me because I get larger herbs and more produce to use in my kitchen. When I nurture my plants, they nurture me. It is a lovely little symbiotic relationship.

After Bible class last night at Vidor, I began thinking about how our spiritual walk ought to be a lot like gardening. We should nurture ourselves in our walks with God. By daily communication with God, we are giving ourselves what we need to be as useful as we can to Him. We don’t really expect to rise up out of the waters of baptism fully grown and mature Christians, do we? We have to work diligently at growing, through study and prayer and good works. Daily—maybe even at the same time every day?—reading/studying/praying helps us grow. We won’t be pale imitations of Christ then. We’ll be bright and vibrant in the Lord. We won’t be weak Christians then. We’ll be full of strength and character and will be able to help ourselves overcome the trials, temptations, and tribulations of this life we live. We won’t be lacking in what we offer up as our produce. Instead, we will harvest the fruit of the Spirit—not only in ourselves, but also in other people. We then will fulfill this ultimate purpose God has for us. This will only happen, however, if we nurture this relationship we have with Him.

As I mentioned, in my physical garden, I work hard to keep the weeds out of the paths where my creations are growing. Spiritually speaking, we must take the weeds of sin out of our hearts and minds and fill them with something else more useful (Psalm 119:11). These spiritual weeds will choke us ‘til we die. Again the hard part about it all is that sometimes we can’t or won’t recognize these weeds as the sins they are. They’re too beautiful to be sins, aren’t they? Oh, but they ARE sins, Dear Reader. They are. We must learn to recognize our own sins and work diligently at weeding them out of our hearts and minds or—someday—we’ll be eating the spiritual equivalent of fern and wild mushroom salad. That’ll be one hot, wilted, nasty-tasting salad, y’all AND we’ll be eating it for eternity if we don’t keep ourselves as pure as we can.

In my physical garden, I thin out the plants nearly every day. In our spiritual lives, there will be times, during which we will have to put aside things we like—or even love—in order to walk on the path which will lead us to Heaven. It is all a matter of what is really more important to us. As a reader, I often find that I have to put the story I’m reading down and reach for my Bible. Reading in itself isn’t a sin, but forgetting to study in order to find out what happened when Constancy fell through the barn door into an underground cavern isn’t so good, yeah? Thinning out the things in our lives which distract us from growing is imperative to our continued growth as Christians. There is just no getting around the fact that we can’t do everything we want to do and still have our eyes on God. He has to get the best of us. Like the little stems in my garden, He has to get the best light and the most room in our lives.

It is hard to imagine myself as a little plot in God’s garden. But I am. And I—and you---must treat myself as a cherished plot of dirt whose only use is to grow fruit worthy of God’s admiration. The question—once again—is do I? And do you?