There was a season — a couple of them actually — when I spent a fair amount of time gardening. How I got into it I can’t recall. But in the early ’90s, I started with a small patch that grew over the succeeding years until I had a pretty robust garden: tomatoes, peppers, squash, okra, beans. We ate well from our garden and enjoyed it. In fact, I would still be planting and growing if I had sufficient sun in our yard today, but that’s simply not the case. I learned so much that I have penned a manuscript entitled “Tending the Garden of Your Soul,” looking at the parallels between gardening and the spiritual life. (It’s pretty rough and quite poor — it needs lots of work.)
Folks who have never gardened don’t understand the need for trusting the process and waiting for something to grow. No matter how often I stood over my okra seeds or tomato seedlings and yelled “Hurry up and grow!” to them, they did not follow my admonition. I learned patience with the plants.
So it is with you and me, our spiritual growth, and the development of the people around us. We want to go from newfound follower of Jesus to spiritual giants in a week. We want the people around us — spouses and children, friends and relatives — to have the same growth rate and spiritual insight that we have. But as tomatoes and squash grow differently and bear fruit (or is that vegetable?) at different times, so we have to allow God to work in us and the people around us in His timing.