Breaking Unplowed Ground

Recently I found myself in our "vegetable garden" once again. Honestly... we haven't spent any time there since late summer when we were able to harvest a few vegetables.  Since then it has been the domain of chickens and guinea fowl, who have cleaned it up pretty nicely.  But I had read that I needed to do some more work before the snow falls and the ground freezes...  so that our efforts next year might bear more fruit  (or vegetables as the case may be!)

So as I tilled the soil, mixing in some compost and other biodegradable stuff we have laying around, I decided to expand the borders of the garden a bit for next year and tilled up another few feet around the edge of what we had done this year. It has been very dry here lately, and the ground was very hard and not at all easy to break up.

As I tried my best to control the rotor-tiller, my thoughts went to a passage of scripture that has been used powerfully in my life in years gone by. "Break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes and showers His righteousness on you." While these words were originally spoken many years ago to the children of Israel, they have tremendous applications for us today as well... Applications that for me have been enhanced by recent messages on God's grace that we have heard at church.

Hosea 10:12-13 is in fact a powerful message about grace... about the wonderful "juxtapositioning" of grace and faith... and about the futility of legalism and self righteousness which becomes even more complicated by the resulting self deception.

As I continued breaking up my unplowed ground in the physical sense, I started considering what might be some areas of unplowed ground I needed to break up spiritually as well. While I am not much of a gardener yet, it is pretty clear even to me that if we don't prepare the soil, we will not benefit much from any "showers" that might come our way.  Is that true also in the spiritual sense? As His children we do not work to be righteous, but we do need to be open to His righteousness which He wants to shower on us. We need to be ready to reap the fruit of unfailing love, (only God's love is unfailing...) We should have a deep desire to seek the Lord until He comes and showers His righteousness on us.  

Well, I have to admit there is "ground" in my life which needs to be broken up. I want to reap the fruit of unfailing love, not the fruit of deception. God's unfailing love lets us look at the world around us with the compassion and grace that only He can provide, rather than the harsh judgmental attitude which comes as a result of self deception and self righteousness.

We are starting to understand that there are specific times when we need to do certain things in our garden. Getting those things done at just the right time makes a lot of difference, and we can mess things up if we don't get it just right. It is awesome to me that we can know absolutely that it is always the best time to seek the Lord because He is always ready to shower us with His righteousness!

Don't wait for anything or anybody.... Seek Him right now until He comes and showers His righteousness on you! Just make sure your "ground" is ready!