Lessons from Tomatoes

The one thing I love about gardening is that you can try things over and over again until you get it right. Last year my Tomato patch collapsed the fence it was growing against because I had too many plants in one patch. This year I have thinned things out and added some poles for them to grow against, but admittedly the poles were an after-thought and although they are holding for now, I think chances are that they could collapse if faced with a really rough storm.

The thought crossed my mind today that if I fail with this batch again, I think I will have found the perfect plan. Plant the poles first and make sure they are stable, then align the plants accordingly and train them to grow up the poles.

Growing in our relationship with God is much the same. In the beginning we throw everything into our efforts to connect with God and get to know Him, but we find we are left with a bit of a mangled mess. Some aspects of our faith walk become strong and grow but our support structure isn't strong enough so our efforts fail.

As we grow we learn, then as we learn we implement our successes and would you know it, after some tries we eventually find that our faith walk is far more comfortable and we are able to remain steadfast in our belief in God.

If you have suffered recent failure in your relationship with God and wondering if is worth trying again, please do! God's grace is rich towards us and when we allow Him too He will send His Holy Spirit to hold us and comfort us and give us strength to try again!