Cleaning The Strawberry Patch

Have a look at this patch of grass.  

Let me tell you a secret.  This ‘patch of grass’ is supposed to be our strawberry patch.  

It is easy to feel overwhelmed when every day as we look out on what needs done we see things like this.  While the good Iowa soil easily gives up its wealth, it also doesn’t exactly make it easy.  

The whole reason we chose this life was not for it’s ease, but for its lessons.  Sure it would be easy for us to go to the store and pay a few bucks for a container of fresh strawberries, but that isn’t the point.  The reason we chose this life is because it offers us glimpses of meaning and purpose every day.  

What purposeful lesson is there in a grassy strawberry patch?  

First, it reminds us what being passive does to our lives.  We are created in this world to be actively engaged.  When God created Adam and put him in the garden, it wasn’t just to enjoy the beauty.  God told Adam to tend the garden.  God also laid some ground-rules.  It was when Adam got passive and stopped actively exercising his authority in work that he was deceived and fell.  The same can be said of many great people throughout history.  While they stayed true to their passion and calling they succeeded, but when they compromised, or got lazy, they failed.  While our little strawberry patch is no garden of eden, the lesson stays the same.  If we become too relaxed about what we are called to do, it will by nature overtake us.     

The second lesson is about choosing hard things.  While we have to continually beat nature into submission, and we have to constantly work to tame it, and shape it, we learn through that process (if we are willing to engage it) that hard work is not a bad thing.  It is when we choose hard things that we learn the biggest lessons and have the greatest victories.  How can we expect to accomplish anything of value if we just give up and take the easy way?  If we wanted easy, we wouldn’t be interested in livestock, or gardens, or canning, or preserving, drying, pickling, planting or harvesting.  We would just go to the store.  Sounds easy.  We would be making a decision that would save us time and energy, but it would come at the cost of purpose, and that is something we refuse to give up.