I said, Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of my love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you. Hosea 10:12
Plowing, tilling, sowing, tending, waiting.
The first step in gardening is always plowing, tilling, breaking up the hard soil in order to make it ready to receive. Breaking up the hard ground, the fallow ground is to remove obstacles and prepare for new growth, to prepare for fruit.
We don’t like to think of our hearts as stony and hard, but they are. It is our nature. No excuse. Sure, sometimes our hearts are harder than others, sometimes they are hard longer than other times, sometimes they are always hard, filled with bitterness, anger, hatred, fear, and are never able to receive the new growth. That’s really quite sad.
We may know those garden hearts, one’s so broken, so bitter, so stubborn, so self-righteous. Some, even ours, so full of clumps of dirt that a planted seed could not penetrate to even take root. Some, even ours, so full of rocks, hurled by us and hurled at us that the planted seed falls on and then is washed away. Some, even ours, so full of worldly weeds, sin, idols, again, those we have planted or those that have crept over the fence.
Reaping is usually the fun part. It’s the purpose of the garden, to watch the fruit form, pluck it from the vine and take it in to be blessed by it. But, before we can reap, we must sow and before we sow the soil must be prepared to accept the plant. There’s really no way around it, there are no shortcuts, if you want a fruitful garden.
There are a couple of ways to prepare the soil. We can get a shovel, a pick, a hoe, slap on a pair of garden gloves, and go at it. Bit-by-bit, row-by-row. A long laborious task, complete manual labor with much sweat and many blisters, that would leave me with a garden only 1″x 1″ because the labor would be too much and I would be all tired out too soon, and give up because I don’t have the woman-power to finish. There would not be much reaping of fruit from that plot.
Another way to prepare is to use a rototiller. A high-powered piece of equipment. A machine that breaks up the clumps. It digs down deep and turns the earth to finally reveal a rich beautiful soil. Plantable soil. Soil ready to receive. Soil without hard clumps. Soil where the weeds have been destroyed. Soil where the rocks have come to the top and can be remove. This method of plowing is still exhausting, and we may still get a few blisters, but the rototiller is doing the most difficult task of preparing the soil. The spinning blades loosen the soil, turn under the grass and weeds, and make it so the rocks can be tossed, to expose the beautiful, rich, healthy soil that is now ready to receive life. The gardener is the one who prepares the garden to receive life.
Loosening the soil, turning under the grass, and picking out the rocks in our hearts is laborious and oft times painful as well. Exposing the rich soils of our hearts in order to receive Life can feel like that rototiller. Ripping, tearing and exposing our hurts, pain, our idols and sinful actions attitudes, tongues and actions – all those things that would choke out the Life planted. The tiller through our hearts can be long-suffering and exhausting. But, the Gardner knows what He is doing. Cleaning out our garden hearts is simply opening them, and making more space to receive more of Him, making room for Him to sow rows of seeds that produce the fruits of the Spirit. The Gardner is the one who prepares the garden to receive life.
Just like the two kinds of garden preparation, manual labor that quickly gives out, or an all-powerful solution that works to reveal plantable soil, we have two options to break up the hard ground of our hearts. We can get our pics and shovels out, we can try to hoe those rows by doing better, thinking more positively, going to church more, throwing more money in the plate, or we can do His way, the all-powerful way – for now is the time to seek the Lord that he may come and shower righteousness upon you. God says hey, seek me and I will come. I am the All-Powerful One. Let me help you get rid of that hard, rocky heart you have.
Let me plant within you eternal Life. Be wary of weeds and lack of Living Water that will take all sustenance and dry out your heart and make it hard. He offers a fence around the garden of our souls to keep out those things that would snatch us up by the roots and eat us right down to the ground –it is His Word. The Sower has sown Life into our hearts. It is our responsibility, along with His help, to tend that Life.
All of this leads me to the question for myself and maybe you too, am I cultivating a life that is open and receptive to divine instruction and blessing. Not am I a good person, a nice person, an upright citizen, but am I cultivating a life that the Lord can shower with righteousness? Am I plowing up the hard ground of my heart? Am I using manual, powerless labor, or am I seeking Him and relying on Him to break up the fallow ground of my heart and making it ready for Him? Am I praying “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right Spirit in me?”
One more thing I love about the garden that I didn’t even notice until I looked at the snapshot — The footprints of the Gardener.