Good Soil

The serve event on Saturday was incredible - I felt the culture shift as we left Glendale, hopped on the I-17, and drove to innercity Phoenix. For those of you who don't know, we had the opportunity to work in a community garden known as The Garden of Tomorrow. An organization called Tiger Mountain Foundation is responsible for starting and managing gardens such as this one all over the city. Their method is simple: they remove the weeds and break the soil of barren, abandoned lots to create a place where plants can sink their roots deep and flourish under their care.

Before we left, we read one of Jesus' parables (Matthew 13:18-23):

"Study this story of the farmer planting seed. When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn't take it in, it just remains on the surface, and so the Evil One comes along and plucks it right out of the person's heart. This is the seed the farmer scatters on the road.

The seed cast in the gravel - this is the person who hears and instantly responds with enthusiasm. But there is no soil of character, and so when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for it.

The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the Kingdom News, but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it.

The seed cast on good earth is the person who hears and takes in the News, and then produces a harvest beyond his wildest dreams."

When I asked what good soil was, it was hard for us to really come up with an answer. Most of us had never worked in a garden. How could we know?

When we got there, one of the master gardeners took us on a tour of the garden. Out of all of the different parts of the it, the compost station had to be my favorite. Compost is basically soil rich in nitrogen that forms from decomposing vegetable peelings, egg shells, and even weeds. Soil is created when bacteria decompose these ingredients, and mix is continually turned and broken. I was stunned by the fact that, when composted, weeds cannot grow back. I was also amazed when we were shown a tree that had literally been brought back to life by soil made of compost.

It was here that it dawned on me what good soil truly is.

The Lord wants to cultivate in us a soil broken enough to receive His Word, deep enough to let it thrive within us, and spacious enough above the surface to produce a fruitful harvest in our lives. His word brings us back into life with Him, gives us purpose, and manifests itself in acts of faith.

You see, our hearts start out like those barren lots - there is nothing really growing because the soil is hard and the weeds are huge. When we invite the Master Gardener inside, He begins to prepare the way for a "harvest beyond our wildest dreams." Just as all of those otherwise dead ingredients become life-giving soil, Jesus' sacrifice reclaimed abundant life for us from the death we deserved. The soil in our hearts is really the same way - when we let the Holy Spirit "decompose" everything that isn't life-giving, including the weeds of worry and distraction, our hearts become a rich environment for intense and beautiful growth. When we let the Master Gardener do His work, even the weeds cannot grow back as strong, and there is more room for fruitful harvests. We must also let the soil of our hearts be soft and broken, so that the dreams God has for us can flourish and send their roots deep into our lives.

-Amanda Cates, Coordinator of Louder Than Words