To plant a garden.

Several years ago, a dear saint came to me after church saying I should plant a garden at school. Little did I know what that would spark. I love watching my kids eyes light up as they taste the watermelon that they just pulled off the vine. I love hearing the excitement as they discover a praying mantis for the first time. Both terrified and intrigued as they realize the diversity God has made in his creation. I love the smell of fresh figs as the kids are tentatively tasting the strange looking fruit. I loved the taste of the fresh salsa the kids were excitedly begging everyone in the building to just try. After an amazing summer of sowing, harvesting, and feasting last year, I find myself a little scared.

There is so much faith required in sowing. I plant the tomato seed. I test the soil and buy the right fertilizers and make sure it gets sunlight and water. But I can do nothing to make it grow. There are no guarantees  in the garden. So much is outside of my control. Then you add the variable that is gardening with children. My garden club right now is entirely made up of 12 and 13 year old boys. Some of my boys come from situations you could only imagine. It reminds me that only God makes anything grow. When sowing requires a child that can barely read and doesn't really do chairs to read and understand the directions on the back of the seed starting kit, you never know what's gonna happen. But, despite the fiercest odds against them, I come back from the weekend to 16 lovely, but fragile tomato seedling about to bust the lid off the little container.

So many Biblical stories are about planting and growing. My response to fear in the garden is over planting. If all my tomato seeds grow, I'll have thirty or forty tomato plants to find room for. My sowing the word should be similar. Sow widely. Sow where it doesn't look like anything should be able to grow. Water even the weakest plant. I don't know where God will choose to grow anything. He chooses the weak things to shame the wise. So I pray that my garden will grow. I pray that my desire for evangelism will grow. I pray that Christ's church will grow here. I pray. I need to persevere in prayer. I pray for more faith in the sowing. I pray for the courage to pray for even the most desperate situation. The ones that have already been written off by statisticians and politicians alike. I pray for my gardening club. I pray the act of sowing and reaping would create a wonder for God's miraculous creation.