One of my college professors told my class that the best way to learn about your spiritual life was to tend a garden. He contended that gardens are the best metaphor for the human soul. They both require water, sunshine, pulling weeds before there can be a harvest. You cannot just say you are going to have a garden and the rest will take care of itself. It is a summer long process that makes a garden grow and produce year after year.

I think I know what he meant. I feel this in part because I grew up helping my parents keep a large garden for our family. Growing up in the Harris’ house included several hours of working in the garden every summer. Long hours of planting, weeding, hoeing and harvesting were just accepted as part of our normal routine. Now, as an adult, I have honestly only kept one garden for a couple of years since I entered the ministry and they was not by choice. The Church had a “community garden” that was kept by one family in the Church and by the pastor’s family. With the garden right beside the Church and my parsonage I really didn’t have a choice. Once again the hours of work mounted as the summer wore on, but there was an abundant harvest that blessed my family beyond the work it involved.

Planting season is coming quickly upon us here in Missouri and we have decided to keep a small garden at the house of one of my elders. I am looking forward to the harvest but I know there will be a lot of work between here and there. Which leads me back to my professor. I think he had a keen insight about living a life for Christ or a spiritual life as it is called. All of us want a great harvest. We want to be blessed and be a blessing to others, but those things do not come without the work of planting, watering and weeding.

A great spiritual life full of God’s blessings can only come through reading the Bible, worshiping, adding Godly things and removing the evil from my life. It requires hours of thought and discussion. It requires Sunday after Sunday of learning and leading. It involves year after year of hard work away from the public eye. The great men and women of God are formed liked a bountiful harvest over a lifetime of constant tending.

Author and preacher George McDonald once wrote, “Show me the condition of the inside of your car and I will tell you the condition of your spiritual life.” My professor said the same concept a different way, “Show me the condition of your garden and I can tell you the condition of your soul.” I think they both are right.