The Testimony of the Work

When the summer evenings nestle a little closer into the days and the morning air promises a more bracing start than last week’s, it is time to lay hurting aside.

Gathering up the late tomatoes and cleaning up the spindly, exhausted stalks I reflect on this changing in the seasons of the earth as well as within me. There has been a good harvest. We have had bounty. And to focus on the mess that remains is foolishness. It is better to just get to work tidying it up so it doesn’t rot the last of the fruit.

Gardening is easier for me than growing. Out-of-doors the perfect balance of soil, seed, sun and water can be relied on to produce sprouts, leaves, blossoms and -- finally-- ripening good things for the table. In my heart things are never so predictable.

Weeds in the vegetable bed are pulled out more effectively than the dandelions and thistles that anchor and flourish in my humanness. I tire. I become frustrated. I am hindered. And usually the obstacles to my cultivating good things are intertwined with people. Sometimes I let them down; sometimes they let me down. Occasionally it reaches outright betrayal between us. Then I am bewildered to be once again feeling such abandonment over the display of the limits of finite creatures to love and care for one another.

Even when the offense is legitimate (which is far less often than I encourage/counsel myself), I focus too much attention on the small sprouts of hurt. Gradually, I choose to nurture those destructive spiny green stalks, to the detriment of the good things. But there is no accomplishment in that -- any fool can grow weeds.

Wisdom sends me back to my Maker. I do not understand why He put such important work in the hands of flawed people, but He has commissioned me to love as I am loved, and to forgive with the measure given to me --  poured out and running over.

That is the task of pulling up rotting and decaying things, and clearing space to nurture the last fruit. It is the testimony of the work, year after year:  plowing, planting, weeding... and delighting in the harvest.