Ostrich ferns grow thick and green in the shade garden near the forest, and they multiply rapidly. Each spring the bank of ferns spreads farther into the woods.
I was working in the garden one day in early spring when a shop customer and his wife stopped to talk with me. They liked gardening too, and the man pointed across the lawn to the row of green that was visible beneath the trees. “Are those ferns?”
“Yes, would you like to have some?” I asked, eager to thin the heavy ranks of waving fronds.
They seemed glad to accept my gift, and we exchanged some garden stories. They noticed the thick, still-dormant vine sprawling over a small building nearby and asked whether it was a wisteria. “No, that’s a trumpet vine,” I said. “I’d like to have a wisteria there someday.” I pointed to a small start about the size of a pencil that I had planted behind the building. “If that will grow.”
They gazed at it, too polite to mention that it looked anemic and tired of life before it had even begun.
I forgot about it as soon as they left. But the next week they brought me a wisteria plant in a container so huge I could barely lift it. They dropped it off in front of the shop and Laverne told me about it later.
I went out to examine it and stood staring at the curling vines that were leafed out, hearty and green and ready to grow. “You really do reap what you sow,” I thought.
Not that I had been doubting this. But it had been a week when the bad seemed to overwhelm the good, and I was struggling with an issue of forgiveness. The wisteria leaves rippled in the breeze and appeared to be whispering: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
Galatians 6:9 adds, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Don’t give up, Paul says. We shall reap.Someday.
After all, very seldom does it come back as swiftly and suddenly as the ferns I exchanged for a wisteria. But what we sow we can count on reaping. Someday. Sooner or later.
Which would be nice to ponder if I always sowed kindness, generosity, graciousness, love. But I’m only human, and more times than I care to remember, I’ve found myself sowing seeds that sprout into ugly weeds. Unforgiveness. Anger. Greed. Envy. Selfishness.Gossip.
And then that is what I also find when I reap.
Someone has said, “We get out of life exactly what we put into it.” That old saying, like many others, is based on a Bible truth. No one slips around the law of sowing and reaping, even if it might seem so for a time.
Often the stakes are higher than a few ferns exchanged for a wisteria. However, if I want to reap kindness and love, that’s what I must sow. If I sow unkindness and gossip and hate, why am I surprised to get that in return?
| Prayer | Reflection |
| Lord, I want to sow seeds of love and understanding, yet so often I fail. Help me to get up and try again instead of becoming discouraged and giving up. | How can I sow one kind act today? |