A perfect gardener

Today I harvested some spinach from my garden. I pulled the plants up by the roots (since the high dessert sun will soon scorch these cold-friendly plants), and then sat at my porch table trimming the good leaves off the plants and bagging them for future use in spinach salads, steamed or sauteed spinach, vegetable lasagna, etc. The rest got thrown right away into the garbage can. If my compost was currently going, I would put it there to recycle the nutrients. (Maybe next year) But I brutally dealt with the spinach this morning, and we will enjoy its good fruit in the near future.

As I sipped my tea and trimmed my spinach this morning, I was glad the leaves in the discard pile were not crying to me, "No! This isn't fair! I thought I would amount to more than this!" I have found myself crying that to my Master Gardener lately. "Surely you intended me for more than the garbage heap! You can't be serious that this is Your real plan for me!" But I planted the garden. It belongs to me. And I am doing with each crop what is best...or I would be if I were a Perfect Gardener.

All this got me to thinking about my Gardener. The one who formed me and knows me. The one who dreams dreams for me, and will harvest me in due season. He is Perfect. I can trust Him with His plan for me, whatever that is. The truth is, I deserve something even worse than a garbage heap. But instead, He is growing me into something beautiful and useful in His garden. And that is a gift of love and grace.

How lovely are your tents, O Jacob,
your encampments, O Israel!
Like palm groves that stretch afar,
like gardens beside a river,
like aloes that the LORD has planted,
like cedar trees beside the waters.
Water shall flow from his buckets,
and his seed shall be in many waters;
his king shall be higher than Agag,
and his kingdom shall be exalted.
~Numbers 24:5-7