"Where did you find God today?"
Today I found Him in the tomato bushes just outside my kitchen window. Mostly I started thinking about this because Hannah over at Tomorrow is a Monday Morning blogged about tomatoes. While I laughed, I also started thinking about those same tomatoes and how my struggle to grow them represents a lot of my erroneous thoughts about how to grow in Christ.
See, most summers I plant tomatoes because they are a necessary ingredient in several favorite summer foods: tossed in with artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, feta cheese, fresh cucumbers and viniagrette they become Greek Salad; sliced thickly and layered with fresh mozzarella slices, sprinkled with chopped basil and balsamic vinegar and served with thick wedges of soured country bread they become a no-cook dinner on a hot night; and the perennial favorite- more thick red slices, hot, crisp bacon, slabs of iceberg lettuce and mayo- the BLT. Thus I will plant in order to reap this smorgasboard of flavor that the tomato brings to my table.
But all I want to do is stick them in the ground and let them grow. That's right. I don't even want to water them. Oh, the first few weeks I do, while it is still a novel concept and I am marvelling at their growth and how they are bigger than my mom's. But eventually the novelty wears off and I find an unsuspecting subject, child who I can conscript into the free labor of toting heavy watering cans and even harvesting the fruit. Then I get to eat them. Obviously, I even let someone else do the slicing.
So where do I find God in all these tomatoes? Because unfortunately, how I tend my tomatoes is very similar to how I tend to my growth in Christ. Meaning, I just want to pray, according to Scripture of course, "Lord, grow me today," and bam! I grow. I don't want to go through the excruciating work of growth, much like I don't want to put much effort into growing my tomato plants. I want immediate results. In her book, Comforts from the Cross, Elyse Fitzpatrick writes,
In my lazy, self-centered life, I want to plant my little bushes today and wake up tomorrow to see them teeming with red and gold fruit dripping off the vines. I want people to visit my garden and be in awe of my gardening prowess. You get the metaphor. While I long to basically be perfected without effort here on earth, God desires the hot sun to beat down on me that I might run to Him for refuge and shade, knowing that He will be producing sweet fruit to grow in me. That same heat produces a thirst for His water of life, that I might grow and be a green plant rooted in His Word. And just as my tomatoes become weighted down with fruit, and their vines hang down heavy with the weight of their produce so that at times it seems to much too bear, I come out and prop them up, gently reaching in and tying the branches to supports. In the same way, God provides me with support: from His Word, from prayer, and from the community of believers, the saints here on earth.Over the twenty-plus years I've been counseling, there's one thing that I can almost always count on happening in the counseling room: people want to get over it (whatever it is) and they want to get over it right away. Whether it is a problem in their marraige or some troubling personal sin, they're usually ready to make any short-term sacrifice. They know they are going to have to work at it, but they expect immediate results, and the thought of having to struggle against a thorny or habitual sin over the long haul doesn't quite fit into their scheme of things. I'll admit that I'm the same. The long, hard struggle with sin is not something I enjoy any better than anyone else. I, too, want to get over it, and I want to get over it now.
Thus, like my Sweet 100's and Golden Cherries, I grow. Yes, somedays the growth seems negligible, yet when I look back, I can see God's work in me and I see His power perfected in weakness and I rest in The Vine.
So where did I find God today? Just like Hannah- in the tomatoes, too.
