#shorts Part 11 — God, the Gardener
(6) I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. (7) Because of this, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but the only one who is anything is God who makes it grow. (8) The one who plants and the one who waters work together, but each one will receive their own reward for their own labor. (9) We are God’s coworkers, and you are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:6–9 (CEB)
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another #shorts post.
Today’s short tidbit comes from Scripture; 1 Corinthians 3, same as the previous post.
If you’re a long-time Reader of my blog you may remember that I’ve written about gardening before. I’m not a professional gardener by any means but I plant things in my yard and have had varying levels of success growing different stuff. The process of growing plants often makes me think, and I’ve gained some valuable insights into life by considering the implications and significance of putting a plant in the ground and caring for it as it grows.
For more on that you can check out some of the other blog posts I’ve written on this. The oldest one, going back to 2020, is entitled Seeds of Wisdom. You can click that link and check it out. More recent posts on this topic are entitled Planted, not Buried, and Reasons for Rain. Check out those links if you’re interested.
Anyway, 1 Corinthians 3 also has a short message for us to consider about growing seeds.
Remember Who Does the Real Work
The simplest explanation of how to grow a plant in the garden consists of three steps: Plant the seed, water the seed (and also wait, this step involves a lot of waiting), and finally, harvest the plant or crop. There can definitely be other steps too, like adding fertilizer or pruning the weak branches so the strong ones can flourish. But those are advanced steps. For our purposes today, we’re only concerned with the three steps: Plant the seed, water the seed (and wait), harvest the plant.
These three steps make up (in general) the part we have to play in all this. But are these three things the…