In the Garden

It's garden season! What a blessing to be able to dig into the soft earth, with shovel and toes :) What a joy to push each little seed into the earth, knowing the promise of yummy dinners full of the bounty of GOD's providence. I planted two peach trees this week, and 15 raspberry bushes. I also planted 1/2 a pound of pea seeds, lettuce, and swiss chard. Soon potatoes, onions, carrots, beans, more lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, and cucumbers will join the garden 'family'. It seems that a garden is a lesson in trust.We trust that that tiny little seed, which really looks like a small bit of nothing, will grow and thrive, and that good food will soon appear. Isn't that a little like our trust in GOD? We put that tiny seed of faith in HIS garden of grace, and we trust that it will grow and thrive, and that soon some good fruit will start to appear in our lives. HE promises that if we have just a tiny bit of faith, we will be able to accomplish anything in HIS name. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20  This passage has always confused me. I mean really, could we really move a mountain? But I wonder if maybe what HE meant was that with faith in HIM, things that seem impossible, well, they aren't. If someone had told me a year ago that by now I would have helped run a Sunday service, and would be playing the piano occasionally for Wednesday night, or that I would  try my hand at writing a sermon, I would have said that there was no way. That I wasn't capable of any of that. But I have done those things. Not by my power by anyone's stretch of imagination, but by HIS.
Often, when I am working in my garden, I think of (and of course, sing) hymns. Sometimes it's This is My Father's World, or In the Garden, or Hymn of Promise. There is something about sitting in a patch of dirt, feeling a warm breeze, singing to my GOD, that makes the world seem right.