Potatoes in the Ground and Artificial Gardens

This morning we planted potatoes and peas. Tomorrow, the Lord willing, we plan to plant beets and radishes. I need to go to Home Depot to purchase some garden soil to top off our raised beds prior to planting the radishes and beets; this morning it was peas and potatoes. The potatoes we planted are from last year’s crop that wintered in our basement.

Over the winter I covered the raised beds with leaves and the past few days I’ve been turning the leaves into the soil, nothing like good soil. I’ve noticed worms in the soil this spring, a good sign – aerate little worms, aerate, no wonder you’re called “nature’s plough”.

As I turned the soil I thought about Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, the soil determined the fruitfulness of the seed (though in the third instance surrounding weeds were also an issue). We do so little heart preparation and too much technical preparation – we want Sunday mornings at church to be technically perfect, it matters not that our hearts may not be prepared, it matters not that we don’t give the soil of our hearts time to absorb the Word of God or time to submit to the Spirit of God. We don’t want “white space” the way a radio or television doesn’t want white space, we don’t want quiet, we want to move things along.

It is inconceivable that someone would plant artificial plants in a garden; it is not that inconceivable that our churches just may be artificial gardens.