Pole Beans and the Gospel

 

I just came back from our vegetable garden, having harvested cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and pole beans (climbing green beans – easier to harvest and, I think, more yield per square foot than bush beans).

 

Pole beans are typically an easy low – maintenance crop to grow in our area; we’ve always had good success with them…until this year. Contrary to my experience, my first planting of beans did not go well. The plants did not leaf out well, the blossoms didn’t form well, and there was little fruit to harvest. It is possible that this was due to poor soil preparation, lesson learned on that front.

 

However, I decided to do something that I haven’t done before, and that is to sow additional plantings of pole beans. I sowed more beans around the existing plantings (after amending the soil), and I used some long rectangular planter boxes that we use for flowers and planted beans in them, placing them alongside the fence that surrounds our garden so that the beans could climb the fence.

 

While the first sowing of beans did poorly, the subsequent sowings have done well, giving us a crop that we would not otherwise have. Had I given up and not continued to plant seed, we would not have a crop of beans. Also, had I not tried planting seeds in flower boxes, something new for me, we wouldn’t have the crop we have.

 

“Sow your seed in the morning and do not be idle in the evening, for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both of them alike will be good” (Ecc. 11:6).

 

“Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season…” (2 Tim. 4:2).

 

“…God causes the growth” (1 Cor. 3:7).

 

We are called to sow seed, and sow seed, and sow some more seed. It can be easy to get discouraged when we don’t see the fruit of our labors, when plants don’t produce, when disease sets in, when storms damage crops (this happened to us this year) – but we never know what will happen if we will remain faithful and continue to sow. And isn’t faithfulness what we are call to by our Lord Jesus? We are called to be faithful to Him and through Him to others – we can’t control the weather, we can’t control how people will respond, we can’t “make” seed grow or people respond in certain ways – but we can sow seed.