3 Ways Farming Helps Us See These Verses More Clearly

One of the first things I planted was grapes. We had a chicken run that was built like Fort Knox, but it was a bit of an eyesore. So, I planned to grow grapes over the run. One grapevine grew nicely right where I expected it. Another did not. It kept growing away from the run, with its viny arm reaching out into nothingness. I would trim back the branch and tie it up against the run. I tried all sorts of things to get that vine to grow where it was supposed to.

About a year and a half into my quarrel with this grapevine, I read grapes prefer to grow in a north-south direction. The chicken run bent around, and this grapevine was meant to grow in an east-west direction. I kept trimming back those south growing branches. My poor grapevine! No wonder it wasn’t thriving! Eventually, the grapevine and I came to an understanding, and it is now flourishing, but it took more than twice as long to really grow compared to the other vines allowed to grow more naturally.

Every time I water that grapevine, I think about the verse that says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

As a parent, I am called to watch my child’s uniqueness and God’s hand on him to help him find the journey he was meant for. I’m not meant to help him grow in the way I think he should go, but in the “should go” of his destiny and calling from his Maker.

That grapevine reminds me that God has an intent and design that supersedes my plans. Real growth happens when we find our God groove, not when we climb the world’s ladders or meet its standards. Whether it’s in training up my son according to God’s intent for his life, or perhaps even in assessing my growth, God has a design for us, and we are meant to grow along His path alone; anything else would just be reaching our viny arms out into nothingness.

Photo credit: Unsplash/Amos Bar-Zeev

We used to keep the chickens in their own coop, but a few things changed and the chickens have been relocated to the goat house. They have their own stall in there where the goats can’t get at the chicken feeder (it can kill goats to get a hold of chicken food). Well, some of our chickens are getting on in years and they don’t really like to go to all the effort of flying over the top of the stall door to get to their feeder. So, I open the door for them to get in. This one precious chicken gets so excited about me coming to open the door that every single time she runs right past the open stall and ends up on the wrong side of the door. I have to help her along to the opening. Every. Single. Time.

I remember my grandmother saying that when God handed out the gifts and talents, she was “behind the door,” just like my chicken is every morning for breakfast. And I can relate to my poor chicken more than I care to admit!

One day, when I was yet again ushering Aloha the chicken into her breakfast “room,” I felt the Lord impress a question on my heart: Are you so much better than Me? You take care of your animals, but think I won’t take care of you, My daughter.

“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Matthew 6:26).

It’s a verse we all know, but a verse many of us struggle to “feel.” Maybe we doubt God will provide for us or we struggle to trust that His care is big enough to cover over our mistakes. But God faithfully provides for all His creation – you and me included. And our stupidity or weakness can’t keep us from His care, even if we rush in and get ourselves behind the stall door!

I know God will provide for me, but I often worry that I will mess up His provision. I struggle to trust Him with the moments I’ve run right past the open door and find myself on the wrong side of it. But He deserves better faith from me. And many times, as I lovingly tend our herd of goats and flock of chickens and ducks, God presses that reminder into my heart. Just like I love to take care of each critter on our hobby farm, He loves to take care of His children even more! Just like my animals trust me to take care of them, He has earned my trust to live securely in His care.

So whether it is cleaning out stalls, checking for a potential wound or health concern, or just sitting and petting each one in the shade of an oak tree, my God does loves to tend me too. I’m not a bother or a burden. When I run the wrong way and cleanly miss His wide-open provision, He will guide me back. Because it’s who He is. Just like being a weird, crazy chicken lady and goat girl has become part of me.

“And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mark 4:18-19).

We live on a mountainside, which it turns out is not exactly prime homesteading land. Apparently, living in the country doesn’t mean you automatically have good land for all the “country living” pursuits we imagine.

Our soil is horrendous! Where there’s not rocks and boulders, it’s all heavy clay. I’ve watched homesteaders on YouTube pull rocks out of their dirt and remark on how many rocks they have… they got nothin’! Our mountainside IS rocks.

I’ve worked really hard on our soil so we could grow things other than chaparral and oaks. I’ve read and watched all I could on soil development. And I finally developed a system that semi works for our situation. But it is very labor intensive as I haul tipping wheelbarrows full of goat shed spent hay and manure up the mountain to the compost pile to later sift and then spread on the orchard and in the garden boxes.

The soil of our hearts is no different. It requires tending, intentional diligent care, sweat and some dirt under our emotional fingernails.

There’s a few passages in Scripture that have long held my attention as I pray they would never describe me. This one from Mark is just such a passage.

We have within us the capacity to accept God’s word, see it germinate within us, and then we let go of loving it and in its place set riches, worldly matters, and all the dreams our imaginations are capable of.

I could do that. You could do that. I have done that.

We went through an exceptionally lean time financially, and I became a human calculator, constantly tracking every penny and stretching every dollar. I wasn’t obsessed with riches because we weren’t “rich” (which if you live in the US, I know that point could be argued). But I was so consumed with making ends meet that one day I felt the Lord press into my heart that I was dangerously close to this verse. The worries of the world echoed in the hallways of my mind where His praise was meant to ring out. I was slipping away from being a fruitful woman for Jesus because we were in a “just making it” season, and the season was holding my heart captive instead of being captivated with my Lord.

I was so stuck under my worries I could not see how to not be driven my them. So I prayed for God to show me His perspective on all of it so I could set it all in its truthful place in my heart.

As I have improved our soil here on our hobby farm, it has taken a lot of manure. A lot. And one day, as I sifted the compost pile, I felt the Lord impress on my heart that the worries and pressures, the hardships and problems, needed to be counted as compost. It didn’t change that they were messy, unsightly, or unusable in their current state. But if I could see them, by faith, as compost that would be broken down in the way only God can use all things together for my good and His glory, those burdens could become heart-soil amendments instead of the weeds threatening to choke out God’s work and word in my life.

So whatever clouds your view of God’s character and promises in His word, in faith, count it as compost! And let it amend the soil in your soul rather than steal away at your faith, hope and love!

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/lovelyday12