Clearing the Fields

“Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade.” - Kipling

Gardens are a lot of work. Planting is a lot of work. My uncle always fancied himself a farmer. He was too lazy to truly be a farmer. He always took to the short cuts. He would hire me though to do what work he did want to do. He used to have a garden that was about fifty feet wide and a hundred feet long. That was the one thing he did put some work into. He never had any money for a tractor so a rotary tiller it was. Guess who got the privileged of holding onto that thing as it burrowed its way through the rocky and unforgiving southwest Missouri soil. That thing would jar me and nearly break me, but it got the job done. Every year it seemed to get a little easier than the year before. 

I remember my dad telling stories about his grandmother and him clearing the back field of rocks so they could have grass and hay for the cows. My dad said that, “In southwest Missouri, the ground grows rocks. You no sooner pluck from the ground and another would take its place.” There is a row of rocks at the edge of the field in the tree line to prove it. That is where they would chunk the rocks as they cleared the field every spring.

You can't see where that garden was, and that field is barely visible for all the trees, shrubs, buckbrush, and weeds that have overtaken the landscape. Left unattended the earth took back its natural appearance. 

“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.” - Hosea 10:12

Our hearts are like that garden or that field, if we don't daily tend to it, taking out the bad or useless and placing in it the good and beneficial; then it will wither and fade away back into the landscape of culture and worldliness. Pretty soon, no one will be able to make out where the field ends and the forrest begins. Its a lot of work but oh how the fruits of your labor taste, so fresh and sweet. Take time this week to do some clearing in your heart for the planting of righteous things that come only from the Lord.