Gardening

09-19-15 088 - Copy

 

Me:  Howdy Prodigal,  you are covered in dirt and sweat.

 

Prodigal:  Yeah, I am just tending to these flowers.

 

Me:  They look beautiful!  I have a story about another garden that I want to share with you.

 

Elizabeth Sherrill  shared this story in the Daily Guideposts

 

A mile from our house is a roadside restaurant in a spectacular garden setting.  For years, on my morning walk, I’ve stopped to gaze over the hedge at beds of roses, peonies, asters, an acre and more of color changing with the seasons.  Who couldn’t have a beautiful garden, I’ve thought, with the gardening staff they must have here!

I’d always gone by too early to see any of them at work.  Then one day, when I had to handle a big mailing project single-handedly, I didn’t get out to walk till afternoon.  As I passed the garden, a stocky middle-age man came from the restaurant basement carrying a tray of begonias.  Seeing me stop, he waved me inside the hedge.  He had to spell his last name before I caught it:  Joseph Csomor.

“Are you the head gardener?”  I asked.

Mr. Csomor shook his head.  “Just the assistant.”

He’d come here from Hungary twenty-seven years ago, he went on.  The restaurant had hired him as a cleaning man, but when he was through sweeping and scrubbing, he’d spent his free time digging around the roots of the potted geraniums that were the only flowers on the place.  Seeing the geraniums thrive, the owner had let him plant some rosebushes out back.

My puzzlement grew as Mr. Csomor told how year after year he’d planted a lilac bush here, a marigold border there, until the garden became the showplace it is today.  If he’d done all this…..”Then what does the head gardener do?”

Mr. Csomor pointed a stubby finger skyward.  “He makes the flowers grow.”

 

What do I do?

I am just an assistant.

What does the leader do?

He’s the one who makes people grow.

 

I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.

John 15:1

 

www.faithincounseling.org

www.theprodigalpig.com

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