How Does Your Garden Grow?

How does your garden grow?

After a long rainy, cold winter, do you remember how it feels once spring has arrived? Do you have a desire to stay outside and enjoy the sunshine when we’ve moved the clock forward and the days grow longer? Does the world seem to come to life, and are your spirits lifted? Are your eyes attracted to the vibrant colors of the blooms on shrubs, bushes and trees? Does the thought of the extended days and sunny springtime somehow brighten and elevate your mood?
Imagine enjoying the spring and summer seasons to the point that you are you able to detect and take pleasure in the delightful smell of jasmine, honeysuckle or the sweet fragrances of roses that’s carried on the fingertips of the slightest breeze. It is truly amazing that something so simple, the gift of nature, can have such a wonderful affect and impact on us.

Whether it is spring or summer it does not mean that every place we see will have an appealing landscape. You might recall seeing that dilapidated looking home, where the once green grass is now dry, dead, and filled with tall weeds that are overgrown and neglected. It probably made that home seem unwelcoming or abandoned. You might have thought that there was no one there who cared enough to devote time to cultivate the dirt, give food to plants for nourishment, and trim the dead shrubs. No one willing to get their hands dirty and water the plants and flowers giving the hydration they need for growth. If you looked at it too long it might even make you angry that one eye sore could actually destroy the look of the whole neighborhood.

We, who inhabit the earth, can be compared to the plants and blossoms in a garden. What we are exposed to has a direct effect on our outlook and potential for growth in life. What we feed ourselves will determine how well our bodies will function. How we nurture our hearts and cultivate our minds will set the tone for the way we treat others.

What we should expect of ourselves and of each other is to blossom, to love, to our maximum potential regularly. Everyday we can evolve, progress and move forward when we take advantage of opportunities to add and apply new positive life changing ingredients to our soil. We have a private internal place, “our garden,” that is being shaped and molded by our attitudes, faith, beliefs, and depths of love. We seem blind to the fact that we allow negativity and cynicism to invade and fester in our minds like powerful weeds. And if ignored, they grow roots that take over the whole flower bed, and before we know it, our once vibrant, fast growing healthy garden has been compromised. One day without knowing how we got there, we will become a weed inside and out and may take others down with us because we’ve weakened and robbed them of their heartiness.

Examine your flower bed? How would you look to the world? Well taken care of or neglected? How likely would it be that others would pick flowers from your garden? Are you alive with zest and personality, rested and taken care of? Is your heart bursting with happy colors and thoughts, fed with good and positive friendships and Godly words to live by? Does the food you feed yourself make you a pleasure to be around and inspire you to want to help others? Do you fertilize yourself with inspirational tools and informative and enlightening composts that will improve your growth and allow you to reach your best season yet?

We are far from perfect, but we are capable of so much more when we aim to be among the elite and award winning!

Use God’s words liberally, your holy water, to give life to yourself again. He gives it in abundance so there is no need to use it sparingly. Actually, the more you have, the more vivacious your blossoms. They will thrive not only now, but will reach their peak year round and season after season.

With consistent and persistent high quality care from your sun, your heart, its warmth will stimulate and allow a new root system to take hold so that it will be able to withstand heavy damaging rainfall or even a drought.

Be strong enough inside to fight all disease that can stunt your growth at any time. Decide to be someone who takes pride in themselves, their garden, and a person whom others would look up to. Become so well established that even a life threatening tornado couldn’t uproot you.
Then as the season has seen its summer and turns into that time of the year when the days are growing shorter and the flowers that have been blooming for months are now steadily disappearing, your colors, foliage, spirit, and your heart will not fade away. That means that fall and winter are soon approaching and the landscaping will turn to shades of brown, orange, red and yellow. Although the air will turn cool and the skies will turn dark, cloudy and produce much needed rain, your virtuous garden will still be noticed, and others will ask “How does your garden grow?”



Inspired by:

Mark 7:14-15
Then Jesus called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”