Good Fruit Starts with Dirt
The past year I’ve been giving a shot at gardening. My wife and I have a small garden where we grow basil, thyme, mint, rosemary, tomatoes, a fig tree and other plants/herbs we find useful in the kitchen. I’ve learned is that gardening is messy and it takes time. I’ve also learned that it is dirty, and each time I go into my small garden, look at the soil, and look at the fig tree, I immediately thing of Jesus and the parables.
This week I’ve been reflecting on the parable of the Sower and the Seed from Luke’s Gospel. When reading the parable, images from Sunday School popped into my mind of white coloring sheets showing a man throwing seed into the fields, images of dry ground and of scary birds snatching away the seeds. In the parable, the seed that really takes root, is the seed that falls into good soil. Good soil has lots of nutrients, worms, bacteria, minerals and by it’s nature, is very dirty.
We often think we are distant from Christ when we see the dirty messes that our lives often become. The appeal of clean rocks and dry ground may appear cleaner, and less messy, but they are not good for putting down roots, which lead to growth that bears fruit. We need to bring the dirt in our lives before Christ, like the woman who incessantly washed Jesus feet in the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7). She wasn’t hiding her sin, she brought it to the feet of Christ. When our sin is before us and before Christ, along with all the ingredients that make up who we are as people, we can begin to dwell upon the riches of the grace of Christ, and hear his Word with open ears and open eyes.
In the Garden, God breathed life into the dirt and formed Adam. In the Gospel, those who have ears to hear and eyes to see begin to cultivate the soil of their hearts, and begin to grow roots that produce fruit.
We can’t produce fruit until we start to grow roots. And we can’t put down roots until we have plenty of dirty, messy soil.
