Waking up
when "breaking up" is a good thing
The soil in my garlic garden (like the photo above) was a little hard and crusty this spring but my garlic is waking up! Not a lot of rain so far so I’ve been out there turning up the ground and giving it water. (See my garlic garden post here)
Working the soil reminds me of the stony ground the scriptures talk about in Mark 4:2-8. Many of you have already heard this parable that compares soil to the hardness of heart. It’s easy to understand the “hardness of heart” analogy when we compare it to people who are cruel to children and animals. Or maybe if you are church folk, you might think hardness is something as obvious as what Pharaoh did when refusing to let the people leave Egypt. It’s easier to imagine someone else having a hard heart. Even though all of these scenerios are important, I don’t want to skip over the fact that we don’t have to look far in our own lives to find that “hardness.”
Speaking of “hardness”, my husband has the weirdest song that plays when the alarm goes off. It’s funny though because I never used to wake up during his alarm before. I think it was because I was so used to hearing a specific song that I subconsciously stopped listening for it...or stopped hearing it because I could brush it off as not being for me. The new song is a soft, erie instrumental but as soon as I hear it, I wake up. Then right away I try to remind myself to thank the Lord for the day before and thank Him for what’s ahead. Strange that such an unusual tune could inspire such a wonderful discipline! And all because my husband (who doesn’t like change) dared to change the tune on the alarm…and my spirit man (I think) woke me up.
Could it be we all naturally have a tendency toward a hard or calloused heart? It’s easier to not be too aware of our surroundings or just keep things the same. Doing the same tasks day after day could lead us to becoming calloused or keep us from hearing an alarm. Could the opposite be true then; that breaking up that soil or changing the routine help us to listen better?
Why try to soften our hearts? Why do we break up the crusty soil?
Just like breaking up the soil to help plants grow, breaking up the monotony in our daily tasks helps us to be sensitive to what God wants to teach us and help us grow! I heard someone say once, that God gives us a thousand ideas a day. If that is true, how many ideas do we hear and put into practice?
Breaking up the soil doesn’t come naturally, it takes effort. God is always speaking to us! It just takes work on our part to hear him. Examining our hearts helps us to stop taking for granted the miracles that happen throughout the day. That process helps us grow.
How do we do it?
• Change things up… (the song on your alarm?)
• Reach out to someone you have thought about but haven’t heard from in awhile.
• Stop driving the same route everyday.
• Give something away that you really would like to keep. (Eeek.) You don’t have to do it. It is actually something God put on my heart. I thought if I told you all about it, maybe I wouldn’t have to do it…. (haha).
• Here is the big one..spend time with the Lord (duh, right?).
Thats all for now, friends.
Stay free, break up the mundane and grow!
Chris and Marilyn
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Links and such:
I’ve been on a mission lately to get the right mixture of soil in my gardens. If you take a look at either my post Grounded on Substack or on my website, you’ll see I like dirt. I love to talk about soil because it smells good in the spring and STILL amazes me that everything a seed needs is in the soil. It’s worth any effort to make it better.
Here are even MORE fun resources!
Gardening gloves (these are awesome)
Plant Propagation Station for root sprouting
A good resource for raising worms for worm castings
A great resource on what soil is and links to other scientific information about soil.
Some links are affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See more info here.
Photo by Abhishek Pawar on Unsplash