I have some photos of myself as a young girl, standing in the back garden. I liked the garden, there was always something to eat there…fresh peas, new carrots and raspberries. Good stuff. But once I left home, gardens were just memories until we finally had our own little house and a great back yard and of course I planted a ‘garden’.
I must confess there is a great deal about gardening that I don’t know. I realized that when I arrived in the Peace River country. They ‘garden’ in a big way up here. I had never seen acres and acres of wheat, barley and canola…as far as the eye could see and I had never seen the amazing equipment that is needed to farm these ‘gardens’. It has been an education.
One of our first volunteer efforts in this town, where I have lived for fifty years, was picking stones off the land that we hoped would become a golf course. It was a back breaking job but we were young and the kids were having fun and we were together outside in the sunshine. The small rocks and stones were set to the side, but the big stuff needed stronger arms than ours. We were a tired but satisfied lot by the end of the day.
I often thought about the pioneer farmers and how much effort it took to break the land; often with pretty basic equipment. They no doubt picked stones as we had and moved them off the land. When I checked with some old farming friends, they said they used a ‘stone boat’…a kind of flat sled that could be dragged by horses. The stones were set on the stone boat, dragged away and the land was ready for plowing and planting.
Our lives are much like those old fields, full of stones, large and small…sins that separate us from God. It is an effort to cast them aside, and pile them on the stone boat, knowing that we have to get rid of them as God has a crop of blessings to plant in our lives. The beauty of it is that He carries them away and with His help we are ready to be made into something useful for his kingdom. Yes, it takes time…sometimes years and we still find those ugly stones of sin hidden deep inside us…but He believes in us and with His help we will produce a harvest that will please Him.
