A little goes a long way

Personal Photo: This was taken just the other day, and I am amazed at how God has blessed us. The garden is a place to find God, to take the time to appreciate His creation, and to remember how something as small as we are can do mighty things with faith in the Lord

As many of you know, my husband, Clay, and I bought our home in August of last year, which means that this spring was our first chance at growing a garden. I grew up gardening; My parents have always grown food that we ate, and so it was quite exciting for me to be able to do it at our new home. With much help from my parents, we were able to till up the land, plant our rows of seeds, and fence what the animals would have feasted on. And after months of watching it grow, checking it every day, and taking care of it, we have really began to see the fruits of our labor.

In fact, we have picked over 60 cucumbers this week, harvested about 50 full gallon bags worth of lettuce, kale, and spinach, and and a grocery sack full of sugar snap peas. Just yesterday, my mom and I harvested the first batch of green beans to come from our garden! We have been so blessed that we have been giving bags of it away, to family, friends, and coworkers. Now that harvest season has sprung, we spend a lot of time out in the garden, picking lettuce and treating ourselves with a sugar snap pea every now and then. One weeknight evening, while Clay and I were out there, I let myself really consider how amazing it all is; How can something so tiny, as small as a cucumber seed or lettuce seed, turn into a vine or plant that is able to provide nutrition, hydration, and sustenance to multiple families?

We have been beyond blessed with the first year of our garden, and I look forward to being able to put so much care and attention into something that gives so much back every year. When I was thinking about it all, how amazing God is, and how He provides for His children, I was really reminded as to how similar we all are to the little seeds we planted, how we can learn a lot from the science of growth. We are told in Matthew 17:20: "He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." The mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds in the world, emphasizing that something small can do great things, and also that something small can turn into a great thing. When we think about ourselves, how small we may feel, how our giving feels like it could never really make a difference, how we struggle ourselves to get to a checkpoint in life, I cannot help but go back to the evening this week when we picked so many cucumbers we could not hold them all in our arms.

As humans, we tend to struggle with trust, hesitate with faith. We are taught to 'not put all of our eggs in one basket,' and to branch out when we feel we are lost in life. While in many instances, these phrases are quite true and encouraging, when it comes to our faith, they simply do not apply. God is our refuge in every season of life, including our seasons of doubt and our chapters of hesitation. A little faith goes a long, long way, just as we are told in the above Matthew verse. Furthermore, Proverbs 3:5 directly tells us to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths." I love this verse when considering what faith can do for us; Faith is not hoping in something that will never come to fruition, like other religions or having faith in the world to change, but rather when we lean on God, when we depend upon His guidance, we are blessed with clarity, with companionship, and with peace. It is worth it to have faith in God at every turn, and to cling to Him rather than looking elsewhere, and we are encouraged to do so with this Proverbs verse.

God's amazing work is around us all the time, but too often we are rushed, out of time, or distracted, and we miss it. He displays His power to us in so many ways, and we can take a moment to slow down, to find it, and to appreciate it and what it means for us. The way that we can appreciate how the seeds in our garden have become countless meals for ourselves and others, we can also appreciate how that influences us, how if He can do it to the garden, He can do it for us as well. By finding the glory of God around us, we can find ways to become closer to Him, to help encourage growth of our faith. Mark 11:22-24 reads "And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Once again, we are given an example as to the power of faith, the way that God loves a faithful child of His, and how important it is that we have faith. Just like how something small can grow and turn into something powerful and strong, we are reminded here that even though we may be weak on our own, but with God, anything is possible! Furthermore, this verse takes something that seems too large to believe, like moving a mountain, and makes it a reality, along with taking that awesome example and applying it to our daily lives. Faith does not mean we should look for theatrical displays of God's power, but rather that we are to practice faith in the little ways. Faith is when we pray in the morning before we get going on our day, it is slowing down to appreciate the migrating birds, it is recognizing blessings and being grateful for them, it is giving to others when we have the chance, and it is so much more. One prayer can change someone's life, one smile can change a heart, and one leap of faith can save a soul. It is small, but it can do grand things, with trusting in the faith of the Lord.

When we find ourselves struggling with how small we may feel, or how little our impact may be, we can remember that faith can move mountains, and that"For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith" (1 John 5:4). Our faith, however small it may be today, overcomes the world. The only way this is possible is because our faith is in the Lord! Our faith is not in our own abilities, it is not in the world around us, but rather we can be inspired that God is doing amazing things with our faith to give Him glory. A lot happens between the time we plant a seed and when we are harvesting and eating it. Just like how we have faith that God will make is grow, it works the same way when we are giving, when we are doing our best, when we are kind to others. We do it all because we have faith that God will cultivate something with it. That faith is never wasted, and it can turn into something beautiful. Additionally, it can help us grow in our own spiritual growth. If we never plant any seeds, how can we know what will become anything and what will not? This verse from 1 John explicitly tells us that our faith in God saves our souls, overcomes the devil's attempts at making us miserable, and strengthens the ways in which God can use us to save other people. It never tells us that we must have the most faith in order to overcome the world, or that we must have been growing our faith for a really long time, but rather it just says faith. We can always yearn for more of it, and we should, but the emphasis is on having faith, and therefore supports how any bit of faith in God can give God the room to do incredible work with us and through us!

I titled this article 'A little goes a long way' for a few reasons. Everyone starts their journey with Christ at different points in life, and sometimes people hesitate to begin walking with Him and committing their lives to God because they feel like they are too far behind, like they do not have enough faith or they do not believe that God has any faith in them. If you are feeling this way, I am encouraging you to trust in whatever faith in God that you have. I promise that the Lord will amaze you with how much faith He has in you, and He will do incredible things in you, for you, with you, and through you. In another way, I think it can be so easy to find ourselves doubting; regardless of how much faith we think we have, we often just doubt that we can make a difference, that people are even listening to us, that our efforts are being noticed. When this happens, I want to encourage us all to remember that a little goes a long way and "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). God uses us to plant seeds in other people's hearts, He uses our faith and loyalty to Him to create strong children of Christ, and He will never take us anywhere in life that we are not meant to go. A little faith in the Lord, a little faith in what God can do with the seeds that we plant in others, it can go a very long way.