Fiona Veitch Smith

Back to the Book

My comments last week about out of sight, out of mind, made me feel surprisingly guilty. So as soon as the snow melted and the rain stopped I got into the garden for a bit of a tidy. Leaves were raked, doggy-do located and disposed of and some dead Lobelia pulled out in fistfuls. Oh dear, is it perennial? Should I have left it? Hang on while I check … oh no, the RHS A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants tells me it is! And just when I was hoping that my understanding of ‘perennial’ - that they die down every year then grow again from root - was the wrong one, Alan Titchmarsh’s How to be a Gardener tells me that I’m not.

It’s in the Book

I must have half a dozen books on gardening that prop up my bookshelf, each one of them costing the life of at least one tree, and I only go to them when I have a problem. Oh, I was very enthusiastic when I first got them - vowing to work through them from cover to cover - but halfway through chapter three I began to flag. The problem was, there was no practical application. I was reading about how to plan a garden when I’d just inherited a garden with our new house. Planning a garden from scratch takes time, effort, knowledge, skill - and money. I decided to do the best with what I had and get help when I needed it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I can guarantee you one thing: I won’t pull up Lobelia again; I learn from my mistakes (in the garden, at least).

Last week, during a quiet time, I heard the Lord say: you need to soak yourself in the Word. Then I had a picture of a shrub in the process of being transplanted. It was soaking in a bucket to take on board enough of the good stuff to see it through the traumatic transition. I felt that God was telling me that I needed to spend more time reading the Bible, not for any immediate need, but to prepare me, in advance, for things that are to come. Of course, reading the Bible on a regular basis should be the foundation of any good Christian’s life, but as I’ve said before, I’m not a very good Christian. There have been times in my life when I have spent hours at a time reading the Bible, day after day after day. I couldn’t get enough of it. The Bible Survey Course I did through Rosebank Bible College and years I spent at YWAM gave me an external structure to help me read the Bible and apply it to my life. Bible study courses at church have done the same. But, as I said last week, I don’t have much time for Christian ‘activities’ these days. I need to find a way to bring Bible reading into my daily life, with dirty dishes and unraked leaves and overfull nappy bins.

Discipline?

Sometimes I think I just need more discipline. What I should do is plan my life better to fit in all of those things I know I need to do. January is always a good time to resolve to do better, be better and get better. And I make it for a while, but come February and my daughter’s birthday, my birthday, my niece’s birthday and my dad’s birthday - oh, and isn’t Valentine’s Day in there somewhere too? - I’m too stressed and time-stretched to stick to the schedule. And that’s not taking into account my work deadlines that have gathered the momentum of an avalanche only a few weeks after the Christmas ‘break’.

And yet, like this morning, when I take the time to read the scriptures and listen to some Christian music on UCB through my new DAB radio, I feel strengthened and refreshed. Like that shrub, I’m storing up the good stuff to help me in the weeks ahead.

Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.

This is the third in a series of A Gardener’s Gospel. I plan to give you regular updates letting you know how it’s going in my garden and hope that you will be encouraged to keep on working in yours. Please feel free to leave comments below and let other readers know how it’s going in your garden.

Subscribe to my feed to receive automatic notification of new content (what's this all about?)