Nearer to God in the garden...

        “Hard dirt.”  My dad climbs down from the cab of his tractor and shakes his head as he glances over our garden.

                “Hard dirt.”  My husband nods next to him.  “Hopefully this deep chisel will help break things up a bit.”

                “Makes me think there must’ve been a cattle yard here once,” Dad continues.  “To get the dirt packed down so hard, you know.”

                “Hog yard, according to our landlord,” B.J. responds.

                It’s one of those things that I always assumed I would be good at, growing a garden.  My dad is, and his father was before him. But my thumbs are not green.  When we finally get around to planting, it is nearly June.  The soil is a dull grayish brown.  It does not crumble beneath the fingers.  And the seeds, they sprout sporadically.  Only a few meager corn plants grow, and I wonder aloud if perhaps the chickens pecked them free of the hard dirt before they had an opportunity to root.  As I say this, I think of the parable of the sower and the wicked one, catching away the Word sown in the heart (Matthew 13).

                Now it is August, and I shake my head as I pass the garden on my way to burn the trash.  The weeds grow wild.  I stand by the barrel near the strawberry patch that I vowed to maintain better so that it would produce more next year and fumble with match after match, trying to get a fire to go.  Garbage beetles scurry up my arm, and the hot and humid beat down and press close.  Little things, but I can feel the heat rising within.  Small stony places, yet I am offended.

                My forehead is furrowed and my mouth tight when I head back to the house.  My son sits shocking sweet corn on the front steps – not from our garden, from another’s.  “What’s the matter, Mama?” he asks as I stomp inside.  My husband, too, queries, his face concerned.  And I spew about too many things to do and too many people to care for and my lack of time.  And my care for things temporal and the discontent in my heart, they choke the patient, loving sprout of the Word right out.

When I go out to call him for supper, my husband is in the garden with a hoe.

                Dusk, and I am standing by the garden.  With the weeds cleared, I can make out more fruit.  The zucchinis and the green beans hide in the cool shade of the leaves.  The pumpkins creep up the fence and sneak into the lawn to hide their orange blossoms. 

                I remember sitting in Bible class when I was young, and thinking that all of the Lord’s parables had a singular interpretation.  I remember relief upon determining that I was represented by sower’s good soil.  Relief upon determining that I was neither the prodigal nor his elder brother (Luke 15).  Now, though, I understand that it is not a question of “either/or” but “both/and.”   I am four soils mixed through.  I am sometimes the prodigal, and sometimes his brother.  And when I wallow in pride and self-pity, the dirt gets packed down hard.

                Is gardening more about green thumbs or more about time?  Is that the point of my life?  I need time to produce fruit.  It is time, after all, in which He makes everything beautiful (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  Time in He which He comes at me with a deep chisel and a hoe, to work the soil and pull the weeds.  Time to make me like a watered garden (Jeremiah 31:12).

                I stand there as the cicadas stop their screeching about summer’s end and a chorus of crickets hems me in.  I stand and watch the last few fireflies twinkle like sequins on the hazy gown of the neighboring fields.

                I stand there, Him planting seeds in the hard dirt of my life.