The Gardener
I grew up in a home where gardening was quite major. There was always a huge variety of flowers blooming and I would always help with the painting of the flower pots. The faithful gardener; Daniel was there to do the hard work. He dug up, planted, weeded and fertilized the flower beds. I loved our garden and I loved gardening, or so I thought.
Sometime in 2016 I decided to give it a go. I got a professional gardener and we went shopping for some flowers. He left instructions for the garden to be watered at least twice a day, morning and evening except if it rained.
Alas, it didn’t rain and things got off to a terrible start. I quickly had to buy a watering can, gardening tools and pesticides. Every morning and evening, I watered my garden. It took three round trips into the kitchen to fill up my watering can for the entire garden. It was fast losing its fun.
Eventually, my flowers started to shoot but so did the weeds. The weeds seemed to be multiplying faster than the flowers. Some of them were really prickly and had roots going deep. You couldn’t just pull them out! Some started looking like tomato plants and I actually caught my mum watering the “tomatoes” one day. I also had slugs coming in to feed on the flowers. This was my first time of seeing slugs. I’m not sure we have them in my country. Surprisingly, they didn’t care much for the weeds. It was such hard work trying to keep the garden tidy just to give my flowers a chance to survive. The whole project was just one big frustration.
My gardening experience reminded me of a life lesson. A person’s heart could be compared to a garden. It is great when the flowers are in bloom and beautifully scented. Likewise, life is fantastic when everything is going smoothly. When there is love, enough money, a roof over our heads, bills are paid and relationships working well. However, sometimes things just don’t go the way we would want them to.
The human heart is not always like my mum’s well-kept garden. Stubborn and ugly weeds can sometimes break through. These could be our thoughts, negative emotions, dashed hopes, fears, prejudices, envies etc. The Bibles says “As a man thinks, so he becomes”. We are the sum total of all our thoughts. Negative thoughts have the habit of wanting to fester in the mind. The more we dwell on them, the more power they can have over our lives. To be honest, sometimes it’s much easier to be negative than to deliberately set our minds on positive thoughts. I always wonder why “bad things” are always more enjoyable and easy to accomplish than “good things”. Chips and ice cream taste so much better than carrots and cabbage. For most people, putting on weight is almost an effortless affair while attempting to lose the same excess weight could be a nightmare. I have also realised that it is so much more satisfying to give “tit for tat” when we are offended rather than turning the other cheek. There is a depraved sense of satisfaction when you know you got your own back.
Joyce Meyer says, “where the mind goes, the man follows”. If we can conquer the mind, then the battle is already won. How can we do this? How can we take back power and control from the mind? The Bible says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks meaning: the content of our hearts will be seen in our actions, reactions, decisions, judgements, speech etc. To conquer the mind, we must feed it positively, with the Word of God. If we spend our time feeding on TV obscenities’ and other junk, then we will continue to fall flat on our faces when confronted by the battles of life. I have realised that when a man is under pressure, whatever is stored inside him will definitely find its way out. We can only fake it for so long. Eventually, the real man will show up. Never press hard on a soft tomato!
Much to my undoing, I had to be away for a week and my garden was left untended. It didn’t rain and the ground became dry, hard and crusty. My beautiful flowers started wilting, but surprise, Surprise, not the weeds. I couldn’t believe it. The weeds were surviving the drought. What on earth was going on? What was wrong with those flowers? This is so typical of the heart. During difficult times, it’s easier to be critical, vengeful and to pull down. Building up and restoring takes so much more effort. Reviving my garden certainly took a lot of hard work. I had to water the ground repeatedly to soften it. I used my little fork/rake instrument to loosen the soil. I dug around the roots and pulled out the weeds. Leaving the roots in would have meant a lost battle altogether. Everything would have grown back again.
In much the same way, we must work at keeping our hearts soft and malleable. We should not allow it get hardened by the blows of “life”. People might fail us, disappoint us or betray us. We can’t control peoples’ choices. The only thing we can control is our response to them. For me, I always look up to the ONE who is able to deal with all issues of the heart. The One who can dig out the root of my pain, fears, resentments and frustrations. Do I get upset? Of course yes. Do I sometimes feel like punching someone in the face? Absolutely! It is very liberating to admit that I need help and to know where to get it. Keep tending your garden and don’t be ashamed to ask for Help. My Help comes from the Lord and it’s no wonder He is called the Gardener.
