Our first harvest from Tanner’s little box garden in the backyard. I know what you are thinking…thank goodness the world doesn’t rely on Tanner’s gardening skills! These puny little okra are probably the strongest vegetables I know. They have survived on very little water…just that of the occasional (and I use that term very literally) and the rains that we got this summer. These okra are already fried, southern style.
As I got home from the grocery store this afternoon and was putting up everything bought, I found these few okra in the bottom corner of a grocery bag on the kitchen counter. As I was laying them out on the table, I kept thinking how many more okra we would have been able to gather and how more plentiful our crop would have been if Tanner put forth more effort to water his garden daily. We could have actually had more than a few bites. I’m sure he expected a bountiful supply…but the labor was scarce.
Aren’t we like that with God? We expect so much from Him. We know He loves us and we know that He is Living Water. He is able to supply all our needs, if we just water the soil of our life with daily prayer, reading His Word and live with unwavering faith. We know all this, yet we don’t do it! Then, we wonder why our soul feels parched and our faith is so small, it barely fills up a corner of a grocery bag. We expect a bounty of blessings, yet we can’t give God as little as five minutes of our day to water our spirit. Don’t expect a bountiful harvest when you haven’t put in the time to water your “soul garden”.
I refuse to allow my spirit to be like these okra…relying on their own strength to survive…just catching a little water whenever it’s thrown their way. I don’t want my faith to fill up just the corner of my life’s grocery bag…
I want my faith busting out the bottom and spilling out around me, in hopes that others will pick some up and enjoy the harvest!