The gift of being a parent parallels the responsibilities of a gardener. As a child is young they are very tender and need nurtured care. Then as the plant or child begins to mature we are to water them in the Word to strengthen their roots within our eternal foundation. The understanding of the pruning process in youth is a valuable lesson to learn. For if we give the miracle grow to an undeveloped child this often causes them to mature before their time.

There are always consequences to follow unnatural growth and the consequences often go unseen for many years due to our human nature of wanting things before we are ready to receive. Since the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden we can witness this message with Adam and Eve. This same parallel of a child can be compared to The United States of America and how we are now seeing the consequences of our overall disobedience due to chasing a dream without first understanding how to maintain what has been given.

There are principles within any garden in order to experience any type of harvest. It is when we neglect these principles of God that our garden’s and our children will struggle to produce future fruit. The object is to care for the garden that we have been given without neglecting our own. For when we don’t spend time in our garden is when the weeds can begin to grow and the serpents can begin to slip in.

If you were to look at your immediate surroundings today or lets say the temporary garden in which you have been given what would see? The garden first starts with our own temple which is our own body and then it reaches out to our homes, our careers and even in the church. I believe when we all begin to look at life as a garden that we will find that there is work that can be done. May I encourage you this morning to not sit on the porch to watch the weeds take over….For greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world….

James A. Harrison

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