Garden University

As a backyard gardener, I have felt the flush of excitement discovering the first fruit of my labor and I have known the disheartening disappointment of discovering your veggies covered in pests. We live, we learn. We learn, we teach. This is a teaching story.

A few years ago, granddaughter Hannah was working with me in the garden. We were painstakingly winding soaker hoses all through the raised veggie beds. While it is a labor of love, hand watering is still labor and the soaker hoses are far more efficient. We were working in the bed where the vining beans live and discovered another victim of the cats; a once thriving plant broken at ground level. Cats and gardeners do not always live harmoniously, but that's topic for a future novel, so I won't get started on that!

Hannah asked if I wanted her to pull it out. I examined it more closely and discovered a tiny brand new shoot coming straight out of the broken stalk. I use gardening to teach the kids about God's creations and miracles, so this was a ‘divine' opportunity.

I told her, no, this is a God thing. She looked at me like I had lost the last of my marbles. She's heard me threaten to take several of each cat's nine lives for lounging in the veggies, so this caught her completely by surprise. I showed her the new growth and told her that was JUST the way God was. He takes the broken lives of people and plants and makes good come from bad situations.

In this case, He had given the plant a second chance just like He does people. Since the roots were in good soil, new growth was possible. When we plant our lives in the good soil that is Jesus, we can grow and thrive in spite of the bad situations that come our way.

Nothing is cuter to a gardener than tiny baby plants and I imagine the tender hearts of broken people are the same to God. An opportunity for new growth!

My prayer is that part of the legacy I leave my grandbabies will include the love of gardening; I praise God for the abundant harvest of opportunities He has given me to use gardening in sharing about Him with the kids. Kids, like baby plants couldn't stand up against the force of a fire hose, but those soaker hoses, well, they can work miracles.....in the name of Jesus!