Another beautiful day the Lord has blessed us with. I ate beakfast on the porch and enjoyed the morning’s bloom into day. My yard is full of birds flitting around the feeders and drinking from the bird baths. The juvenile cardinals are colored in such wondrous plumage as they begin to mature. Some of the the males are so dark gray they are almost black. The females are getting their soft brown feathers and orange beaks.

Had a delicious lunch fresh from my garden harvest this morning — squash, cucumbers, and fried green tomatoes. Add a pint Mason jar of sweet tea with mint from the garden and my lunch was delicious! Looks like I’m going to have to freeze some squash or just eat it every day. I hated to sacrifice that green tomato but I knew it would be tasty fried. I’m so looking forward to that first tomato sandwich from the garden. Don’t mind eating those every day.

“Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, perennial pleasure plants, and wholesome harvest keeps,” Amos Bronson Alcott. A garden is dependent on many things — soil, water, weather, pests, sunshine. We can only harvest what we plant so the harvest is dependent on our sowing seeds. God can’t multiply our faith if we haven’t shared it with others. 2 Corinthians 9:6 says, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” When we pray for others we are planting a seed for God. Good deeds, kindness, and love for our family and friends plant seeds of faith, too.

We plant our seeds in the garden and then we have to watch to see if the seeds sprout. It’s hard to wait and see if all our hard work pays off. We have to have patience and let God take care of the growing. Some of us give up on our Christian faith when things happen that interfere with our daily lives. As long as life goes along without a few hiccups we’re rooted in our faith but soon as a few weeds pop up we begin to let them take over. Don’t give up too soon. God does not forsake us. Our faith must be nurtured daily through prayer and worship for us to harvest the benefits of God’s grace.

Most of us harvest much more than we planted. We plant one seed and get one plant but that plant will produce much more — my bell pepper plant is just full of baby peppers and blooms and will give me seeds for next year. Jesus says what you reap will always come back greater than what you sow.

All of us are farmers sowing spiritual seeds across our lives. We can plant seeds of joy and love or seeds of anger and hate. All these seeds will bear fruit at harvest time. Paul says in Galatians 6:7, “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” Spiritual seeds will give us a life time harvest of abundant faith. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant,” Robert Louis Stevenson. Plant seeds of love in God’s kingdom and God will give you a bounteous harvest.

“Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.” — May Sarton