By Pastor Leah Fintel Krotz, Trinity Lutheran Church, Bruning
This weekend, the WOW (Women of the Word) of Trinity and their guests will be attending a garden party brunch at our home. As I’ve been preparing, wishing with all my heart that hail and wind and drought hadn’t made this such a difficult spring for gardening, I was reminded that gardening is a hobby that provides many opportunities for reflection. So, here are three lessons God has taught me in the garden:
1) You do your best weeding down on your knees.
There are other ways that you can try to take shortcuts to get rid of the weeds, but they never seem to work as well as good old-fashioned elbow grease, kneeling in the flower bed and digging them out by hand. It seems to be the best way to get all the roots and keep them from coming back, and it also gives you the opportunity to be up close and personal with your flowers, looking for other problems and also enjoying their beauty and fragrance. In the same way, trying to solve my problems or deal with persistent sin is best accomplished on my knees in prayer. God is the one who can help me weed out the sins and troubles in my life, and when I’m praying I can also enjoy his friendship and praise him for his wonderful gifts.
"Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!" -Psalm 95:6
2) Pruning is painful, but also necessary.
I don't really enjoy pruning my plants or trees. It's difficult to force myself to cut down something beautiful or cut off something that's blooming, even though it's crucial to the health of the plants. And the thing is, it's not only dead and diseased branches that need to be pruned. Sometimes you have to prune a good branch because it's growing in the wrong way or so it can produce more fruit. This is what God does in our lives as well. Sometimes we have to give up even good things if they get in the way of the more important things he wants us to do. We have to be selective in what we allow in this one life we're given.
“He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” -John 15:2
3) Perfection will come, but not in this world.
Having people over for a garden party this spring was an exercise in remembering this valuable lesson. After an open winter and an incredibly dry spring, combined with hot weather in February and a plunge down to 7° after everything had budded out, then a wind and hail storm a couple of weeks ago, the garden is not at its best. But I have to remember that this world is broken by sin, and that includes nature itself. One day, I'll be able to work in God's heavenly garden, where thorns and thistles, droughts and hail storms, will be not even a memory. What a joy that is to look forward to!
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” -Isaiah 65:17
