Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom.” // Matthew 13:36-38
“Mommy, look what I grew in my class,” my three year old exclaimed as I picked him up one day from preschool. He had a decorated pot filled with soil and a tiny sprout centerfield looking healthy and (actually) alive.
Jeez, even my three year old can grow a plant when I just look at them and they wither and die.
But I responded with enthusiasm while he told me all about plants as we drove home. “They need good soil, sunlight, and water. You have to place the seed INTO the soil,” he lectured me. “You cannot put in too much water,” he scolded.
Yes, my three year old was lecturing me about gardening. Yes, I have the brownest thumb on the planet. Somehow my children have picked up gardening skills thanks to the green thumb and careful instruction of my own mother, but alas, I cannot seem to keep a plant alive. Somehow I even kill succulents.
When I read Scripture with imagery of the gardener and the sower, I occasionally grimace to myself. I cannot relate to this imagery. I don’t have one gardener bone in my body, and truthfully, while in prayer, I do not imagine myself in the dirt and mud while the Lord and I tend to the garden in my heart.
If you’re like me and that imagery does not stick, imagine Him helping clean out the hoards of baggage of your heart. Or imagine that He’s changing the popped tire of your car, or that He’s washing the windows of your sky rise, or that He’s patching a leaky roof. He does it all, and He gives us the uniquely human capacity to enter into imaginative prayer with Him.
Today, as you settle into prayer, allow your imagination to wander. Where do you need weeding or mucking or cleaning or patching? Allow yourself to enter into prayer with Him.
He does it all. // @substance_soulClick to tweet
Dr. Samantha Aguinaldo-Wetterholm is a wife and mom to four little ones and practices dentistry at a public health community center for low income families in the Bay Area, California. She (unashamedly) thinks ice cream is its own food group and does not leave the house without wearing sparkly earrings. She was a contributing author to All She Had. and our children’s devotional prayer book called Rise Up. Find out more about her here.
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