“We’re pretty much the worst farmers ever,” she proclaimed on the video she was taking.
“What the world? It’s winter time. Nothing grows in the winter time,” my wife and I replied.
“Still, we’re pretty bad at it,” my daughter said.
Folks: It. Was. Winter. My daughter has a very high bar for what successful gardening looks like. For her, if it’s not growing and producing, even in winter, it’s an epic failure.

We started a garden the first spring after we moved in our home. We went from having zero land in the city to having acres and acres of land in the country. Our garden was our way of dipping our toe back into the American dream: a yard with a garden, kids playing, animals frolicking. Our country hearts had been bustling in the city for too long. Our new home would be our own little dirty-hippie-commune of plants and animals and Jesus and eternal sunshine. Adam and Eve in the garden once again.

I could see it all so clearly. It would be glorious. It would be like that scene in Gladiator where he’s walking through the wheat field, but without being gladiated and murdered to death. Our little heaven on earth.

We didn’t have a tiller, but that’s ok. Real dirty hippies don’t use tillers. That’s right folks. We’re those kind of dirty hippies. So we broke up the ground with hand tools. There were some blisters, but no biggie. Part of doing business, and brother, business was a’ booming. We bought seeds and plants. We sprouted, and planted, and tended, and watered, and fertilized. We worked, and we were reaping.

However, the squash bugs didn’t get the memo that this was our own personal piece of dirty-hippie-living-off-the-land heaven. It took some bit of Googling before my wife figured out what all those bugs were. It took some more Googling to find a solution to our pest problem. We lost a lot of squash plants, but not all of them. We kept seeing a harvest come in every week.

And then winter rolled around. Everything in the garden went dormant or died off. Year one of gardening, according to my wife and me, was a success. We planted; we harvested. This is how gardening works. But our daughter saw winter as conclusive proof of our epic failure at gardening.

Not to be discouraged by bugs or sayers of nay, come spring, we were back at it again. This time we were prepared for squash bugs. I was ready to go Hippie-Roman-Legion on those jokers. The bugs we were prepared for. But we weren’t prepared for health issues that took us away from our garden. At some point it became a choice of taking care of my wife, or tending our garden. So the garden took a back seat. Added to that, the deer also didn’t get the memo. We weren’t prepared for the deer using our garden as their morning breakfast buffet. We weren’t prepared.

Matthew 13:8,23 (NLT) “Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!…The seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”

There was a direct cause/effect relationship in the amount of time we invested into our garden in terms of how much vegetables came out of it. The less we weeded, the less we got. The less we watered, the more plants withered. What wasn’t protected from the deer was consumed. But even last year’s garden, I don’t believe, was an epic failure. We still pulled some cucumbers out. Squash. Purple potatoes. A couple sweet potatoes. A few raspberries. Sunflowers bloomed and traced the sun’s track across the sky. Compared to the number of seeds planted, we still raked in good profit. We had planted a good bit, so even through the toll of bugs, deer and neglect, we saw some veggies out of it. It was short lived, sure. But had health and deer not conspired against us, we’d probably still be eating squash.

There’s a couple takeaways from the extended passage in Matthew and from gardening in general:

• We still saw a harvest even though some harvest was stolen or choked out
  • Some seed always falls on good soil and produces for you.
  • When faced with the decision to plant or not to plant, plant.
  • More seeds planted gives you better odds of weathering disaster.
    • If we would have planted 3 plants, we would have been sunk. By planting more, we put the odds more in our favor.
• God is a planter
  • Very rarely do we see God operating in the realm of instant gratification. That’s what makes miracles miraculous. They don’t happen that often, but they do happen. Some would say the fact that we pulled anything good out of our garden last year is miraculous. They wouldn’t be wrong, but by planting a lot of seeds, we were still able to see a harvest.
  • Though miracles by their nature are rare, the nature of seeds is not rare at all. God sows seeds all the time: in your yard, in the forest, in the fields- seeds abound. Plant seeds.
• It takes time and time is cyclical
  • Related to above, from seed to harvest takes time. If you try to rush it, you’ll just end up frustrated.
  • There are seasons. Contrary to what my daughter thinks, most things won’t grow in winter time. That doesn’t mean that your ground is stricken and that all hope is lost.

I was reminded again this morning that last week is done. Last year is way done. Today is another start. Spring is on its way. This week you have an incredible opportunity to plant more seeds. Today, you have an incredible opportunity for God to plant more seeds in you. Even one seed or one plant can produce a big harvest, but the more you plant the better your odds. Get out there and plant good things. Get in the word and let Him plant good things in you. Plant seeds this week, good seeds, and trust Him to bring in the harvest. Let Him plant lots of good seeds in you through frequently reading the bible, through prayer, and through spending time with Him.