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Heart Gardening
by Aly Dent
The pandemic shutdown in the spring of 2020 gave our family the gift of time, so we tried our hand at vegetable gardening in a box. We chose a sunny spot, built the box, prepared the soil with vital nutrition, watered it regularly, and kept the weeds out. Our efforts rewarded us with a luscious garden full of yummy vegetables.
This year was different. We had less time on our hands. In hindsight, we aren’t sure if we intentionally or mistakenly skipped the step of turning in an extra layer of manure. Either way, the poor little plants struggled to fulfill their design because the soil lacked vital nutrition to flourish.
Our hearts are like gardens. The Lord brings them alive and then he cultivates them with ordinary, yet powerful means of grace — his word, the sacraments, and prayer — the vital nutrition we need to grow in faith and trust in him. After he makes us alive, he asks us to do things to make our calling and election sure.
Read 2 Peter 1:1-15.
Verse 5 tells us that heart work is not accidental. “For this very reason [verses 1-4], make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”
Deliberate cultivation of our hearts protects us from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s look back at my garden metaphor.
In 2020, we chose a garden location and prepared it with vital nutrition so it could bear fruit for us. Then our work began. We hoed the soil, tossing rocks and debris aside. We turned the earth with manure, laid in a weed barrier, carefully watered the seeds, and daily protected the plants from getting choked out by the weeds that fought for soil space. The plants thrived according to their design. The plants in our garden this year could not fulfill their design because we didn’t give them life giving soil. Our souls are no different.
Read 1 Peter 1:1-13.
Verse 13 stresses the need to prepare our minds for action. John Calvin said, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” The Lord said in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Cultivating the Heart series will come to the page with this foundational truth: salvation is by Christ alone and the Spirit empowers our heart cultivation. 1 Peter 1:3-5 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
The series will focus on the tension between the call to prepare our minds, the reality that our hearts are idol factories, and Jesus’s advice to guard our hearts, keeping in mind 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 that reminds us that God gives the growth. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
Heart Work for October
1. Think about one way the Lord has taught you to prepare your heart for action. What beauty has God cultivated in you during the process? How have you shared it with others?
2. What does “hearts are a perpetual idol factory” mean to you?
3. Meditate and memorize Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
4. As you chew on the truth in Proverbs 4:23, make notes as the Sprit teaches you more about himself and more about who he says you are in him.
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