Articles
The Garden
My office window looks across the back yards of neighboring houses. A slight ridge line runs along our rear property boundaries, draining water very quickly and making it hard to grow anything.
Last year an older man moved in two doors down. Since that time, I have witnessed the evolution of that ridge through his slow but persistent work. He has gradually dug down from the crest about 18 inches to 2 feet, creating a level shelf about five feet wide and about 50 feet long. He collected the rocks and piled them into a small retaining wall on the downhill side.
Just yesterday I watched this slight, somewhat frail fellow sitting in a white, plastic lawn chair and swinging a full-sized pick ax to break the clay. Then he sat in the grass and sifted the rocks, patiently piling them one atop another.
I am quite amazed by this spectacle. For starters, it merely represents preparation. All this time and energy and patience and nothing is even planted yet; the “gardening” is yet to come.
Isn’t this one of the many metaphors of this life? Sometimes in our impatience we look for the shortcut. We crave immediate gratification without the hard work of preparing the soil. Surely one facet of wisdom is the realization that worthwhile things require a lot of effort.
At a golf tournament I once attended, a pro hit his tee shot slightly askew and ended up in the rough. A smart-aleck from the gallery heckled, “Wanna take a mulligan?” The pro calmly turned and retorted, “If this was easy, everybody could do it.” Zing.
“The sluggard will not plow because of winter; therefore he will beg during the harvest and have nothing” (Prov. 20:4). Sometimes we do not harvest because we never planted. And we didn’t plant because the task seemed too big.
Take a lesson from my neighbor. If you can’t do it all today, do what you can and do a little more tomorrow. “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Gal. 6:9).
