Tilling the Land – Cultivating our Hearts and Minds

This morning I read a favorite verse which connected nicely with my meditations in previous posts on The Bible, The Word, and the Seed; it is Proverbs 12:11: “He who tills his land will have plenty of bread, but he who pursues worthless things lacks sense.” There is a similar thought in Proverbs 28:19, “He who tills his land will have plenty of food, but he who follows empty pursuits will have poverty in plenty.”

As a vegetable gardener I know that I have to pay constant attention to the soil, to the food-bearing plants in the soil, and to the weeds. I can’t take a week off during growing season and think that the garden will take care of itself, it won’t – if I don’t care for the garden the weeds will have their way. During growing season there are some plants that require daily attention lest their fruit spoil or grow so large that it looses its tenderness and taste – okra and zucchini are two examples. I sometimes wonder why we bother with okra because so much of our crop gets out of hand and we can’t use it.

A garden tended daily is a healthy garden; a garden tended daily also is healthier for the gardener than the gardener trying to play catch-up every few days – a garden tended sporadically will not yield its potential and it will be wearisome work for the gardener. There is nothing quite so demoralizing as to see one’s work of planting overrun with weeds.

The man or woman or young person who tills the ground of heart and mind with God’s Word on a daily basis will have a perpetual harvest of food; food not only to eat himself (or herself) but food to give others. Those who work the soil to the point of having dirt under their fingernails, those whose hands have the color of earth impregnated in their pores, those whose love of the earth make them one with the earth so that the two are indistinguishable – these are those who are one with the Word, those who have embraced the Word, who have responded to the exhortation of James (1:21), “…in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.”

What does my harvest in the Word look like today?

What about yours?