(If you've never tried to care for a plant buy some petunias at the store. Plant them in a pot and keep them growing all summer. Petunias like sun, daily water and you gotta pull off the dead blossoms. If you pull them off you will have flowers for months. And if you grow attached to the plant you can bring it indoors if you have a window.)
We learn so much about spiritual growth and God when we grow things. Growth is from God. Growth is life.
I wrote a post called Start it now March 31, just 23 days ago. If you quickly click on that link you'll see that it shows a bunch of empty egg shells -- shells that I told you I'd fill with potting soil and seeds. Here are what some of the seeds look like now:
But the really fun ones you can see below. They are different kinds of squash plants. One kind is spaghetti squash (which works great for those on gluten-free diets like my husband. We love our spaghetti and the gluten-free spaghetti is a bit spendy around here).
I planted all these seeds the same exact day.
See the squash plants below:
Aren't they great!
I'm not a great gardener. And even if I was I can't make a seed grow. Some grow. Some don't. All the growth work is God's. I gave the seeds the appropriate conditions to grow in order to give them the best chance I could. That's all I can do.
These squash plants have grown too big for their little shells so I transplanted some of them. See below:
Now they look smaller and not so huge, but in fact I gave them a bigger growing place and today I'm going to let them sit out in the sun.
(The camera angle isn't the best either.)
(Don't think it's too late for seeds. You can still plant them. If you're far enough south you can plant a lot of them in the ground right now!)
This is definitely not the direction I meant to go but let's go with it!
There is a book called the vinedresser's notebook by Judith Sutera. It is about, well, exactly what the title says. She goes into the spiritual application of caring for a grape vine (which Jesus did a few times, specifically in John 15). I want to share a couple of quotes from it:
Sutera writes, "Remember that in every cycle, almost everything needs to be cut but the trunk and the roots."
And she says, "What we always have to remember when making choices is that the fruit does grow close to the trunk. We can't get too distracted and begin to trail in various directions. Focusing on who we are rather than what we do will put life in a clearer perspective . . . We are to be about the harvest and not the foliage."
Jesus is the vine (the trunk) and we are the branches. He says in John 15,"Live in Me."
That is the best thing to do always and forever.