into the ground

growing garlic

I loosen the soil and make a shallow trench in the vegetable garden. In a basket beside me are several garlic heads pounded and broken apart. I will plant the many cloves to be grown into new heads of garlic come summer.  One by one I lay the single bulbs into two long rows. The white papery skins glow against the dark earth.  I kneel down and with my right hand push the dirt into the trench and over the garlic. It seems to me like the trench is a grave and the garlic a soul.  It is buried alone in the dark. 

I whisper a prayer:  Lord, I plant and water, but you make it grow. 

I’ve never planted garlic before. It feels like a great act of faith on my part to plant a seemingly inanimate kitchen ingredient into the ground just as the warmth of summer is ending and the deadness of winter nears.  It seems impossible that a cold, dark, uncomfortable period of time is just what is needed to produce something vibrant, beneficial, and abundant. 

And so, into the ground that seed of garlic goes; To sprout roots and divide, to be hidden a while, and then grow upwards to break through the surface after months of being buried and unseen. 

Am I still talking about vegetables?

in the hands of a faithful gardener

The comparison of our lives to that of plants in the hands of a faithful gardener is not a new one, but it is a good one.  We are like those heads of garlic, I think. Our Lord desires to gently break us and bury those parts of us that need to grow into a new life. A better life. His life.  

One noticeable but important difference is that we are not inanimate like vegetables—we have a choice and an invitation. Do we choose to enter into His burial? Imagine if that clove of garlic, like some brash gingerbread boy —thinking it knew better and could escape discomfort—chose to run from the good plans of the gardener. It would eventually die. 

Let us not run from the burial that God, in his wisdom, would have us undergo. Our refusal to die comes with a cost. Jesus says that those who try to preserve their lives will forfeit their lives. Those who are willing to die for his sake will live. 

Those who die are promised a resurrection. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his” (1 Corinthians 6:5, NIV).

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

1 Corinthians 6:5, NIV

It takes a great act of faith to trust that our entrance into a desert wasteland will lead to a verdant promised land. 

It takes a great act of faith to trust that hardships and discomfort can lead to victory and growth and something worthwhile. 

Our lives are like Abraham on the mount with Isaac. Will God supply the ram? 

Let us not run from it. 
Let us not fight when we are meant to surrender. 
Let us not keep what we are meant to release. 

choosing surrender

I remember a time when God’s hand was heavy upon me (as the Psalmist would say).

I had gotten caught up in ambitions to make money and a name for myself in the business he had blessed me with. Out of his love for me, he broke me apart. I knew even as it happened that this part of me needed to be surrendered. I could choose to ignore his direction and keep going the way I had wanted, or I could choose to give this part of me up to him. 

Into the ground, I went.

I released my business to God. 

In the end, I chose his way. I can tell you that I have gained far more by that death than I ever could have by my fighting to keep my fleshly desire alive. I also know I would have experienced far more heartache and pain if I had maintained the fight.

Without the surrender of the seed, there can be no fruit.  

I want to give myself to this death and burial in all areas so that the remaining parts of my flesh can be raised and released into his sweet, freeing, abundant life. Let my pride, selfishness, fear, and doubts be put to death more and more so that something better may live.

May we not fear the discomfort of surrender. May we remember that to be planted—and even to experience the unpleasantness of burial—will, by God’s loving hand, bring forth a rootedness in him, a wonderful bursting forth of life and an eternal fruit,

for His Glory and to His praise!