Lessons from an allotment

This week my family were invited to a good friend’s allotment in Sheffield to share their abundance of food in a barbeque. It was a perfect socially distanced way to while away a summer’s night, with a beer in one hand and a burger in the other.

My friend gave me a quick tour of the plot, proudly showing me the different beds and crops. Then she showed me some rather bare ground with a few limp plants, explaining in bewilderment that they had faithfully sowed seeds here to plant a crop of pumpkins but nothing had taken. Yet, on the other side of a hedge only a few metres away she’d sown the same seeds which were now sprouting really well into succulent vegetables. She had no idea why, it was her horticultural mystery.

It got me thinking about the way in which we as people sometimes respond favourably to the good news about Jesus, while others reject it. In fact, in the bible Jesus himself described people’s hearts as being like soil: sometimes thorny, sometimes pure in our responses towards God’s offer of friendship and leadership.

The seeds which God wants to plant can be choked when the going gets tough or we get consumed with the world’s cares or materialism. Good soil allows for the deep roots of people putting God’s ways into action in the everyday, and produces a crop of good-living. 

As we stood outside in this fruitful allotment watching the sun set over Stannington I remembered that we will always have soil, and always have the sun. In the same way, God faithfully shines his light on us all, all of the time. The offer of Jesus in the soil of our life is always available.

As the bible says “He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty” (Matthew 5:45).

I believe God wants to plant seeds of hope in each person’s life today.

Like the soil around those pumpkin seeds, may our hearts be receptive and turn towards the light.