Today’s Reading: Isaiah:23-25 ; I Corinthians 3
Over the last couple weeks, the season has been transitioned from summer to fall. There are days when we have extreme heat and the next day is extremely cool. This is a great time of year. All of creation is starting to slow down and starting to get ready for the winter. Today, as I was driving to a pumpkin patch, I saw several furry caterpillars crossing the street. This is nature alerting us, they are getting ready for the winter to come.
As part of the preparations for fall or autumn, we have started to harvest garden items and the big crop items: corn and soybeans. One part of fall gardening that is not known as much is the closing or renovating the garden. This consists of pulling up the expired crops and preparing the garden for the spring or for a fall crop. This process is not easy. It’s the same process that is performed in the spring. In this process you have to remove the roots and the stems of the previous plants. Then turn the soil and give it more nutrients to prepare for the next harvest. If you are producing a fall crop, you need to plant the seeds before the frost comes. This is a very strategic and a meaningful process that has to take time and effort to execute to ensure that you are a proper steward to the garden.
“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
1 Corinthians 3:2-7 ESV
In the third chapter of First Corinthians, Paul is using the garden as a metaphor. He uses himself as a sower of seeds. Then he uses Apollos as the waterer of the seeds. He uses God as the gardener. Paul has a great understanding of his assignment or appointment in the grand scheme of the garden of God’s people. Paul is sent to give the seeds of compassion and love that God has for us. Then Apollos was used to water and cultivate immature the seeds, that planet by Paul. But the true gardener of the seeds is God. Nothing can be done without God‘s intervention into the garden.
Sometimes we can lose focus on our assignment and what we are here to produce, sometimes we believe that we are the gardeners. Sometimes we believe that we will see the fulfillment of all the things that we do. We try to own everything that we are given to manage or be stewards over. We forget that this assignment is temporary and that God is the only one that owns the garden and has the full picture of the garden.
God is graciously giving us an opportunity to see that we may sow seeds and not see the fulfillment or the fruit of those seeds. Each time we give a smile or a kind word, we are sowing into people. I admit that I get in a place that I want to “own” so many things and want to see the results of the seeds that God has allowed me to plant. Many times I want to see the end result. As I grow, I know that the good that I give will be rewarded.
Let us not get caught up in the end result. Let us not get caught up in who is watering or who is sowing seeds. Let us not get caught up in thinking about only us. Let us ask God to give us the ability to be the best steward.
When we need reassurance let’s remember Isaiah 25:
“O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat; for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall,”