When I was a kid I remember running outside to see what raspberries were growing on the bushes. I also loved munching on the apples on our tree before they fell to the ground. I considered myself lucky to forage for a snack in the wild of my own backyard. I would peak through the thorns and bug nibbled leaves for a juicy berry. It was the pinnacle of childhood.

When I look back on those years, however, I see a different picture painted. My mom tended to her family rather than her garden and so the strawberry plots yielded berries for the squirrels and the raspberry bushes and blackberries overgrew and produced enough to feed the beetles and birds with the occasional stolen berry for a child’s pleasure. My bountiful childhood was really a story of growth despite neglect.

I wish I could say that my very own garden was any different, but I can’t. I get excited for the harvest in the cold winter months and plant the seeds, but by the time they’ve sprouted I’ve moved on to other things and don’t spend the time to prune them young. They are watered faithfully in spring but after several months of waiting for the harvest, I grow weary and water them less. They grow, despite neglect.

For many years my faith was like that. It grew through my childhood and teen years despite neglect. I bore fruit, but it was only because I have a gracious God. I was serious about Scripture but the harvest was slow coming and life kept me busy enough. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I truly began to tend to my garden. I planted it and watered it, but I was a novice. I didn’t understand what needed pruning and when. I cared for the garden and reaped in the harvest season, but I knew I could be producing more fruit than I was.

What a garden needs is a good gardener who is faithful and knows what they are doing.

A good gardener can evaluate the leaves of a branch and tell if it is going to help the plant grow or if it is going to waste energy and resources by maintaining leaves while producing no fruit. A good gardener is constantly pruning in their garden so that all of the plant’s energy goes towards producing a harvest, not just leaves. He cuts out the red herrings of our lives and leaves the rest to grow. He gets down on his knees, he works the soil, he gently trims the plants, and he ties in reinforcements for the branches that will bear fruit beyond its own strength. He tends to the garden because he foresees the growth and challenges that await it as time goes on.

A novice gardener is thrilled when two plants grow in the place of one because they think it means twice the harvest, but as those plants grow and compete for sun and water and space, neither will flourish. A good gardener knows how to discern when something simply looks good and promising but will only bring hardships that minimize future growth. A faithful gardener will weed out that which will stand in the way of future growth even if that means cutting the plant’s own branches. He does it because he loves and cares for the plant and the potential it has within it. He mourns each time the plant shrinks down in size when he has to prune, but he rests and rejoices in the knowledge that the harvest will be bigger and stronger because of it.

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I praise God for He is the good and faithful gardener who turns deserts into gardens.

I praise God that He gets on His knees and dirties His hands so that His garden may thrive.

I praise God that He rips out the roots of the weeds that strangle His garden even though it unearths the ugly ground beneath them.

I praise God that He cares deeply for His garden and only prunes it to increase growth beyond its present potential.

I praise God that He knows that which is yet to come and tends to His garden accordingly so that it yields a plentiful harvest.

I praise God that He lets some fields die down so that He may return to rested soil ready to cultivate nutrient rich produce.

I praise God that He resurrects neglected and barren fields to someday overflow with vegetation.

I praise God that His gardens will always bring forth abundant fruit in their rightful season.

I praise God that He does not rest until after the harvest.

I praise God for He is the good and faithful gardener who nurtures wastelands into bountiful gardens.

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“For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song” Isaiah 51:3

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