This is Seed Time

This summer the garden has been the outlet for me. And as we come upon August, I am pleased to say our first year garden has not done entirely bad. My 5-year-old son has been my partner in crime for all things garden and chicken related. We built our raised beds together, raked manure into said beds together, planted seeds together, and did our "checking on how the garden is doing" together--just about every day. It is one of my greatest joys to sit and talk with him about these things as we learn together. 

We started small, only 3 boxes, but the return has been favorable for a first year try. I planted easy things, popular plants that most people find success growing: bush beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, and cantaloupe--the last of which I am hoping to harvest by the end of the week. Of the assortment planted, beans and cucumbers were by far the most successful. Zucchini squash would have been quite a hit had it not been for the dreaded squash vine bore, and the peppers have struggled along, although they are finally looking healthier at present. Many of the tomatoes suffered from "blossom end rot" but the survivors are starting to redden on the vine. 

All this to say it has been a lot of fun, a welcome and productive distraction to normal life. We are learning, we are taking notes, and we will try some different things next year.

The Bible is ripe with gardening and growing metaphors. The Christian life is likened to a vine attached to the branch of Christ. The blessed man is likened to a seed planted by rivers of water, the coming judgment as a great separation of wheat from tares, the gospel message as seed hitting various soils and environments. These illustrations were obvious then to the Hebrews, but perhaps much is lost in our modern context where we are far too separated from a process so central to our existence. Backyard gardening, however, allows you to appreciate the metaphors anew: to realize the tremendous potentiality packed into a single kernel and the exponential return that can come from such a thing as a mustard seed. 

Take a zucchini plant for instance. One seed can grow very quickly, spreading out large green leaves well over the borders of your garden. Beautiful yellow flowers begin to emerge, and before you realize it, you find large squash growing from the vine. I looked it up and discovered that a fully grown and hardened zucchini fruit can contain within it over 500 seeds. 500 seeds each with the same productive capability of the one seed they all originate from. And those 500 are only from one fruit, who knows how many more fruits one plant can produce! This illustrates powerfully the idea of sowing a reaping. 

Today's secular world has a strange fascination with karma and Eastern religion, watered down to blend with our own individualist values. Karma is something they say, "will get you." Do good to someone and it will come back to you. Do bad and it will return as well. In this popularized idea, karma has a 1:1 yield. Do one bad thing and one bad thing will happen. Sowing and reaping, however, is another matter entirely. Sow 1 zucchini seed, and 500 zucchini seeds come back to you in one fruit. Its effect is that of multiplication and exponents; a mathematical graph shooting up the Y access. A little goes a long way in the kingdom of heaven, and small deeds will prove great in judgment.

Paul writes in Galatians 6: 7-9, "7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." 

This text absolutely gets at the exponential return on the sowing investment. Whoever sows to their flesh will reap, not a one-to-one ratio of punishment, but destruction: terrible and everlasting. Those who sow to please the spirit, will reap life eternal in the presence of God. Everything is multiplied thousand-fold in the life to come, the seeds planted will sprout and bud, and the question is, what will you yield on that day? 

Everyone is planting some kind of seed with their time, with their exertions, with their loves. Whether they are aware or not, everyone is casting some kind of seed upon their ground. God will not be mocked to allow anyone to yield contrary to their deeds. The God of all the earth will do right and repay each according to their works. 

This life is the time of sowing. This is the seed time. We tear up the soil and plant our seeds in the ground, trusting that this effort will not be wasted and there will one day be an increase. Many of us get some first fruits in this life, but the full harvest is yet to come, and we have no categories to rightly understand the magnitude the harvest will contain. What it will be like, for good or for evil, we have no conception.

Therefore, heed the apostle’s admonition: do not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 

What are you sowing? Are you sowing to the flesh, and your pleasure, and your appetites? You will reap accordingly. Are you sowing to the Spirit and towards the Kingdom of God? You also will reap accordingly. Seed time is a most precious time, and when it is gone there is no going back; no subsequent life to return and make amends. This is it. This is your time; so may we labor while it is day time, for the night is coming when no man can work.