In all things...

by Alice Valdal

This year, wherever two or three gardeners are gathered together the talk inevitable turns to the disappointing yields this year.  The litany of complaint is loud and long.  Miserable spring, cold July, no bees, marauding deer, slugs, no sun.  I complain with the best of them, often leading the chorus.  Here it is, the end of summer and my tomatoes are still green.

In previous years, my plum tree has yielded bushels of fruit.  This year, I've got a niggardly offering that won't full one ice cream bucket.  I was ready to write off the garden as a complete failure, and then I found the blackberries. 

The bushes are laden, the berries sweet and juicy and huge!  Best of all they require little effort to grow and maintain.  I can't help considering the blackberry bushes along the roadsides as an example of God's grace.  We label them "noxious weed."  We cut them down, plough them under, trample them over.  We strip them of fruit and hack at the vines, then turn our backs and ignore them.  Yet, year after year, the blackberries shower the ungrateful with abundance, fruit fit for kings, there for the taking, no questions asked, no one excluded.


When I look at the failures and successes in my garden, I am reminded of Paul's message to the Thessalonians, In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.