The Love of Labor

In the beginning, my children did NOT "like" to labor (play was by far their favorite activity).

Gardens were school grounds for learning to love labor in a way that had nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with honor and obedience through the practice of "denying self" - something even children can learn to do.

These were the seasons that we learned where both of our hearts were...

theirs in obeying,

and ours in how we responded to their lack of desire (they did not delight to do our will) - at least not yet.

A cultivating work of 

faith and love

was going on in all of us,

 even in these earlier years.

Still is!

Sometimes growing in faith is very much like this...

We learn more from the things we can not control, or have no desire to do.

“...but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience hope... experience, And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” Rom 5:3-5

The word for patience here, is to stay under the load - "endurance". It is also used in Luke when talking about another garden - the garden of the heart. 

"But the seed sown on good soil means the men who hear the message and accept it with a good and honest heart, and go on steadily (with endurance; patience) producing a good crop." Luke 8:15 J. B. Phillips

This fruit of patience is best learned on the hard ground of resistance, because fallow ground must be broken by the plow before it can be planted with the seed. 

It is through this experience where we learn that even drought conditions are working something more beneficial in our hearts than abundant rain ever will.  The deeper the root goes underneath, the less dependent on external conditions to thrive.  

Wait for the rain, YES, 

but trust HIM

 even when its dry.  

Remember, you can't plow when it's raining, but the heat of the day is no hinderance to the plow.

Labor will lead to His rest, but we can not despise the difficulty that it takes to get there.

"Behold therefore thy God at work, and promise thyself that what he is about, will be an excellent piece." ~William Gurnall

"To take and receive all things not in ourselves, but in God, is the true and excellent way of dying to ourselves and living only to God" ~Madame Guyon

Above pictured is Whitney and Joseph, in one of our first gardens.