First Fruits

These vegetables are the first fruits of our family’s 2020 quarantine garden. I’m embarrassed to admit how proud we were of these few veggies. Humor me if you are a garden enthusiast; we however, have never grown a thing. This garden was extra special to us. It provided so much health and unity in a strange quarantine season. I’ve thought of 1 Corinthians 3 a lot… “We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made it grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving.”

I’m always grateful that God would use us in His miracles. So humbling. But, what I find staggering is that HE creates something out of nothing. He can make a squash, tomatoes, peas, okra out of the basically nothing. More miraculous than that, He can also grow unity, teamwork, and pride from siblings at odds during a difficult quarantine season by growing a garden among them. But, I don’t want to stop there… We are looking at a world that seems outside the realm of a miracle when we know that HE is the miracle. He can grow understanding, empathy, healing, and joy in a world of hatred, division, selfishness, and grief. Maybe you feel like me…striving in my own strength to grow something miraculous that only God is capable of growing.

We cannot grow good things without the creator of those things GROWING them in us out of nothing. Let us all be reminded that He actually made us from dirt. (Psalm 103)

In our own strength, we can strive yet we will only see a fruitless garden without Jesus. Absolutely nothing healthy will grow without Jesus.

These first fruits are valuable to our family. We had a tiny sliver of something to do with them. But, shame on us if we don’t surrender our thanks right back to the Lord. We stuck His seed underground. We put His water on it. We had absolutely nothing to do with the miracle that grew.

Father God, grow miracles in the garden of our life. Our desire is that you would grow a miracle in every single sinful heart that surrenders to Him. In Jesus name, Amen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Mysti Chustz has been following Jesus since she was six years old.
• She is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. Her most favorite roles are being wife to Philip and mama to Coleman, Mary Lamar, and Clay.
• If one verse was used to describe her life, it would be Philippians 1:6. “Be confident of this, the One who starts the work in you is faithful to complete the work in you.”