Turning of Days: Lessons From Nature, Season, and SpiritExemplo

Day 2: Dirt, Glorious Dirt

Sometime in early spring, my husband will turn over our garden. We don’t have a large plot, but it’s enough to grow in. With good planning and better tending, a garden requires less land than you might think. In fact, one of nature’s private jokes is that we generally only use 6–12 inches of soil to garden. Don’t let the commonness of dirt fool you. It is a wondrous thing. 

Which gives me pause when I think that God, when He wanted to make a creature in His own likeness, stooped down and took a handful of dirt. To be marked as soil is no slight. To be marked as soil is to speak of potential and life and vitality. 

This does not mean that all soil is healthy. This is, after all, the point of the parable that Jesus tells about the seed that falls on different types of soil. If soil is hard and compact, like a footpath, a seed cannot penetrate it and is quickly eaten by surrounding wildlife. If soil is stony, a seed might initially sprout, but it won’t have sufficient room for its roots. If soil is already full of other plants, a seed can’t get enough nutrients and suffocates.

But the good news about soil—even poor soil—is that it can be cultivated. The good news about those who’ve been made from earth is that we too can be cultivated. Because there’s another story Jesus tells His disciples: A landowner has a fig tree that isn’t producing fruit so he decides to cut it down. But a wise servant steps in and says, “Sir, leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.”

So often we focus on poor quality fruit or lack of yield and throw our hands up in defeat. But the real questions are more basic: Do you want a good crop? Do you want to see the fruit of goodness in your life and in those you love? Do you want to see a harvest of righteousness?

Don’t cut the tree down; cultivate the soil. 

And I can’t help but think of all the ways I’ve been worked over—how many ways and how many times my heart has been broken open, the weeds stripped out, and the rocks dislodged. I can see how the Father’s working His soil like a faithful gardener, cultivating it until it’s honest and good and ready to receive His word. And I’m confident that, just as He did in Eden, He will cause even the smallest of gardens to flourish with life.