Sunday, January 15, 2012
Your Mind’s Garden
Dana and I ordered a couple of packs of heirloom seeds this week from a company that only sells generations-handed-down pure seed...for use next year if we're blessed to plant a garden. As you know, hybrid fruits/veggies we buy in the store (as well as most of the plants from seed catalogs) have been genetically altered in a way that, for the most part, their seed is worthless. It can't reproduce over and over again...some won't grow again at all. Some might bear once and then no more.
I remember my first experience with hybrid seed years ago as a teenager. I ate this huge, juicy peach from the market and thought, "I want a whole tree full of these!" And so I planted the pit, watered it, nurtured it, and it never even broke the surface of the soil in my little flower pot. Then my Grandpa explained to me why...seed from a hybrid will not produce fruit-in-kind again. Not outside the laboratory that produced it, at least.
In a spiritual sense, I wonder how many things are planted in the garden of our minds which are like these hybrids on our grocery shelves and in our nursery catalogs. Most certainly, there are habits, thought patterns and actions which can bear bad seed and keep reproducing if we don't root them out of our lives, but is it possible that there are also "hybrids" we partake of in our daily lives...you know, not quite good, not quite bad, perhaps even a genetically altered blend of both? Things which take up space as far as our time, energy, passion is concerned, but offer nothing lasting in return? Most certainly, those dead pieces of fruit in our lives are man-made, just like the hybrid foods that look bigger, brighter, and better on the outside but have nothing of value on the inside. Do you want to mass-produce a lot of nothing, or bear perhaps a lesser amount of something that has substance and quality...and the ability to perpetuate blessing?
How blindly we live our whole lives existing on hybrid everything. We run out; no problem...we go out and buy more, relying on sheer faith that someone else's manufactured product is going to be there tomorrow for us. Ever thought about what were to happen if no one saved and replanted the heirloom seeds, but even the farmers just kept buying hybrids? What if we wise, super-efficiency human beings experimented our way right into extinction? Could we have a bumper crop of hybrids one year and be crushed with famine the next? I don't know about you, but in my spirit life as well as in the physical world, I don't want to be totally dependent on someone else's ability to keep me filled and fulfilled. When the rubber meets the road, there must be something substantial and pure in my own garden...today and again tomorrow.
As we choose how to spend our time, the currency of our lives, may we look for ways to invest it that bring a harvest now--as well as to ensure a return in our future. I understand, because I love to read and learn—it’s easy to get sucked into a vortex of dead-end trivia that stimulates our mind and starves our spirit man. We're constantly bombarded with new things to see, do, attend, join, and click “like” on (smile),...don't be so anxious to fill your basket that you wind up with an empty cart when it's time to check out. Renew your mind with the only seed that is pure, unadulterated, and lasting—the Word of God. Time is short…make the most of the one life you've been granted.
Scripture Of The Day: "You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is beneficial." - 1 Corinthians 10:23 (New Living Translation)
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