Part I.
Gardeners. Let’s be clear. There is no promise of a harvest in the garden! But there is always hope for a harvest. The more experienced the gardener, the more probable a good harvest is. For beginners, the more questions answered by experienced gardeners, again, the more likelihood there is of reaping a good harvest.
Tomatoes are a crop I’m familiar with. This year I planted yellow pear heirloom cherry tomatoes, red cherry tomatoes, and beefsteak tomatoes. The original idea was to have enough for family sustenance through the late summer with hopefully one or two jars canned for later.
Tomatoes don’t enjoy extreme heat and generally won’t set fruit when the daytime temperatures hover at 90° or above. I started my tomatoes indoors early to get a jump start on the heat of Texas summer. We ended up with one 92° day in early April, three 90°+ days in May, and by June, we hit 101°, with multiple days in the upper 90s back-to-back. So that was good planning, right?
As it turned out, I was so focused on beating the heat that I didn’t consider the possibility of a long spring with low average temps well into mid-May. The extreme heat overlapped with uncharacteristically long cool weather, and it was quite late by the time I was able to put my well-cared-for tomatoes in the ground. They were not happy. But there was also a tomato plant that came up in last year’s compost area. It was not on my radar but definitely germinated all on its own at some point, while I was hardening off my indoor tomatoes.
Below are pictures of the first harvest. I have hope for more tomato harvests in the coming weeks.
Here is that same group of tomatoes ripening on the counter. Two are missing because we ate them. Yum!
These tomatoes, I don’t even know what type they are. I only know they are de-li-cious! But the tomato plants that I did everything I knew how to ensure success – produced very little in the way of results:
The beefsteak tomato plants only produced two. One was lost to rodents. The other one was lost to grasshoppers. We have now relocated seven grasshoppers as new residents to our nearby lake!
The red cherry tomatoes never made it to 6 inches tall.
And the yellow pear heirloom cherry tomatoes? This is their current state with one tomato:
Cute right? But I was looking for more than one tomato. A hope for a harvest seemed to turn into a hope deferred.
Like the tomatoes, we seem to be caught in the middle of a strange season of extremes. Many of us are looking, hoping, for a harvest.
What hopes?
Hope for a job.
Hope for a child.
Hope for a fledgling business.
Hope for degree completion.
This is just a minuscule sampling of the hopes that spring up in the human heart. Sadly, every endeavor doesn’t come to fruition, and this is simply one reality of the world in which we live.
But the joy of hope realized often comes from unexpected places:
That lead we’ve forgotten about or archived.
Conception when we’ve given up, or the unexpected opportunity for adoption.
A new contract that infuses our bottom line.
A fresh new direction or perspective on our education that we hadn’t previously considered.
We can do everything we know to do: research what conditions and actions are best to launch a certain type of business, time our body clock rhythms, spot and eradicate the threats that will get us off track, and consult with others on the best way to accomplish any endeavor. But in the end, having done all we can do, we must stand in faith that God has our best interests at heart, (Jeremiah 29:11) and that he is good, (Psalm 34:8) no matter how challenging things may be in our current season.
In Ecclesiastes 11 the writer speaks about seedtime and harvest. The reminder is that a harvest will come, but it won’t always be known from where, how long it will take, or which endeavors will fail due to hardships while others will thrive and flourish. These are the basics of life harvest. Not tomatoes with an expected time to maturity.
Our compost heap tomatoes are a great illustration though, of this one thing: we continue to have faith that God’s timing is just right and that there are seeds we plant unknowingly, that he can use to bring a harvest.
I can get so preoccupied with planning everything perfectly, according to my schedule and comfort, that there are moments I forget to look to the Lord of the harvest for the perfect timing of things. Many times that harvest comes right when everything I worked on in my own understanding, has failed. This is becoming a recurring theme in my experience: God is working behind the scenes on things I’m not even aware of, and He is preparing a way for me when my focus is completely elsewhere.
Let’s remember though, we don’t ever sow seeds with no hope! There is always hope for a harvest if we keep looking for it, and if we expand our horizons to believe it can come from places other than the well-known, well-trodden paths.
When we are in the habit of sowing seeds of expectation, there will always be hope for a harvest, and, even the realization of a promise.
Look what else came up where the compost heap used to be! It is now a utility area and yes, that is one sunflower plant.
Okra: A Hope for A Harvest (Part II)!
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