Vision vs. Reality

The last time I had a garden it was 1994.

Yep.  My visions of going to the backyard and picking fresh organic vegetables and putting them on my dinner table are just that.  Visions.  Not much reality there.

But this year, after 7 long years of wanting one, we are finally attempting to put one in.  We have gone from four raised beds, to two raised beds, and now I am making do with one raised bed.

But hey, one raised bed is better than no raised beds!

In my flush of farming excitement I took myself off to my local hardware store that carries plants and bought a mix of regular tomatoes and heirloom variety tomatoes.  And cilantro and peppers (can anyone say fresh salsa?).  Zucchini seeds and cucumber seeds too!

My fresh, precious new plants sat on my back porch as I tried to finish preparing the bed for several days.

And then it happened.

The back gate was left open one night.  No need to name the culprit, or culprits (if we were to name them they would be Hannah and Abigail, but then again we are not naming names.)

What is the problem with the gate being left open you may ask?  Well, we have deer.

I am not talking Bambi here.  I am talking herds of voracious, ravenous, devouring, plant eating deer.

We are in the middle of a drought here.  And so there is not a lot of green vegetation around.  Deer must have a nose that would rival a hound dogs because they must have smelled my fresh, green plants from across my dead weeds and came right in my yard and ate my baby plants down to the dirt.

So what am I to do?

Do I throw those plants out and trudge back up to the hardware store for new ones?  In a different time I might have done just that, but the current budget does not make that possible.  Soooo........

Seeing no other option, I planted them.

In one little bed.  It is not the vision.

My reality garden.

This is the vision.

My "vision" garden.

And these plants are not the vision either.

Peppers anyone?

No, that is not a dead stick,
it is a tomato plant.  Really.

But as I stood looking at my pitiful, eaten, nub of a plant I could see the tiniest of little leaves trying to re-emerge.  And I could just feel my Lord wrapping His arms around me.

This is how life is.  I have a vision.  I have a dream.  It is usually lovely, and not messy, and smells good, and has singing birds in the background.

Tiniest of leaves coming forth.

But I also have a reality.  This is where the fallen world and my nice vision come crashing into each other.  And my vision gets banged up and bent and cracked.  And put to the fire.  And refined.

And then my vision get to meet up with the redemption of God.

And then it gets to be transformed from something selfish and material and affluent into something real and tangible and eternal.

And so, in celebration of the redemptive power of God I planted my little eaten up plants.  They remind me a little bit of someone.

Who would that be?  Oh yeah, me.

A broken down saved sinner who needs to continually be planted in the soil of God's Word so that the life giving Water can flow through my veins and produce eternal fruit that can feed a hungry world.