Some of you had asked about my garden and so I thought that I would give everyone an update. The growth still seems agonizingly slow for many things. This reminds me that Spiritual growth in some areas of my own life can seem agonizingly slow. Some plants are not bearing much fruit and others are producing abundantly. Some will take a few years before a notable yield and others have done better than I could have imagined this first year.
Some of the fruit I have been freezing until I have enough to do something with, which is really hard with the red raspberries that I would like to eat as I pick. It is like Jesus’ parable – of the seed that fell on good soil some produced a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty (Matt 13:8, 23, Mark 4:8, 20). Of course the weeding can be tedious – especially the “strangle weed” that likes to take over and is nearly impossible to uproot. It is important to keep at it though, just as we need to be aware of the weeds in our lives – “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things” that “choke the word” (Mark 4:19).
I planted more than two sunflower seeds but I have two huge sunflower plants. As a child in Kansas, we grew some sunflowers at least one year and I had forgotten that the bud will follow the sun. The other day I was observing that the top of the plant faced one way in the morning and the opposite direction in the evening and then today when I went home for lunch it hit me that it was pointing straight up – and then I remembered that the sunflower bud follows the sun and points to it. What a powerful metaphor (made even more powerful in English by the italicized homonym hereafter) for what we are to do as Christians – we are not to follow the sun in the sky above but to follow the Son in the heaven of heavens above. Indeed, we are to point to Him with our words and deeds.
When the flower opens it will face east. Old Cemeteries used to have all of the stones face east too. East is the direction of the sunrise and thus symbolically the direction of expectation of the return of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we can be reminded by the direction the flower will face to look for the return of Jesus Christ. May He come quickly.
Hopefully these illustrations will also help you to remember these things.
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