Planting Season

I would probably say that the spring planting season is my favorite time of the year. This is the time of the year when the garden is plowed, ripped, and tilled to prepare for this year's garden. As the weeks progress, you see small rows of green plants starting to peek out of the ground. Some plants, started weeks ago, are transplanted to their new home in the garden or a raised bed. This time of year holds untold possibilities for the coming harvests later in the year.

The success of the planting season is not found so much in the planting season itself as it is the months to come. The real success is determined over the weeks and months after the seeds are planted. If you plant the seeds and never till or hoe around the plants, then weeds can easily grow up around your plants and choke them out. If rain doesn't fall for weeks on end, then plants can dry up and be ruined. If varmints, like deer, raccoons, and groundhogs, get into a garden, they can decimate a crop in a hurry. Plenty of rain, fertilizer, and warm temperatures can have the exact opposite affect on a garden. Gardens that are regularly watered and kept free from common problems can produce a bountiful harvest.

The planting we do with spiritual seeds in our spiritual life are just as fragile and can be just as bountiful as a vegetable garden in your yard. If the soil of your soul is not plowed and tilled to receive the seeds that need to be planted, then those seeds will never take root. I think a guy named Jesus said something similar one time (Matthew 13:1-23). We have to put the work in to make sure our hearts are ready to receive the seeds God wants to plant in us. Once we plant spiritual seeds, let's call them truths, into our hearts, then we have to tend to them so they might take root and grow to be strong spiritual truths in our lives. If we don't do the work to get rid of the weeds in our spiritual hearts, those truths we've planted will get choked out and never impact our life. If we don't water the seeds of truth with the life-giving waters of prayer, Bible study, service, giving, and worship, then those truths will shrivel up and die. If we allow the varmints of sin to attack those truths we've planted, then they will root out and decimate your spiritual crop.

If you take great care of the spiritual truths you plant in your heart, then you will reap a bountiful harvest. Some of that harvest will be like fresh vegetables picked at the peak of the growing season when they are the ripest. You'll enjoy those truths being harvested from time to time in your daily walk. Others will be enjoyed at harvest time, when you have grown in your faith and you have an abundance of the truths impacting your life. Finally, others will be experienced in the coldest days of a spiritual winter. Like a jar of green beans canned in the middle of the summer and enjoyed on a cold January day, the truths you plant and nourish will one day sustain you when your aren't sure what else you can rely on.

I hope today's post has encouraged you to do what is necessary to plant spiritual truths, tend to them, and harvest them in your walk with God.


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