In early spring, I get my annual delivery from a local landscaping company. Most people would be offended if someone walked up to them and handed them a bunch of dirt, but nothing thrills me more than to see that dump truck pull into my driveway. As the truck’s bed tips up, mounds and mounds of beautiful, fluffy black soil tumble out.
I call it black gold. It clumps up beautifully when you squeeze it and smells like green, growing things.
Soil matters. It’s important to renew the nutrients of tired, old soil because if you don’t, the plants that grow in it will be stunted and lack nutrients.
People are the same. If our “environment” is off and we don’t nurture ourselves in the right ways spiritually, nothing we do will flourish.
Our environment, and the things we let into it or the things we let deplete it, can affect our faith and our lives.
One year I didn’t bother with composting my garden because it takes time and effort, and I wasn’t up for it. My garden was a sad, sorry mess and hardly produced any harvest.
The same holds true if we don’t nurture ourselves with God’s Word and create a spiritual environment rich in God’s teachings. We wither on the vine instead of growing fruitful.
“Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream” (Jeremiah 17:7,8).
