Thursday, May 28, 2015

Garden You Didn't Grow


Last year I added green onions to my garden for the first time. While it wasn’t exactly a bumper crop, I did get a few decent onions. This year, however, I didn’t plant any onions. That’s why I was quite surprised to find the onion, pictured above, growing in my yard this year. The onion is easily three feet high and puts off a great onion aroma.

I couldn’t help but think about how God blesses us by sending the rain and giving food from the ground. More often than not we have to do our share of work, toiling by the sweat of the brow. But at the end of the day it is the Lord who gives the increase.

In Deuteronomy 6 Yahweh told Moses that eventually Israel would enter the Promised Land, and when they did, they would live in cities they did not build and houses filled with goods that they didn’t put in them. They would also drink water from wells they didn’t dig, and eat from vineyards they didn’t plant. Those markers would be the sign of God keeping His covenant obligations.

But there was a warning: don’t forget the God who blesses you. We are prone to do the same thing today. Most of us enjoy freedom that we didn’t fight for, benefit from infrastructure that we didn’t build, and eat food that we didn’t sweat for. God is the progenitor of those blessings, and we need to be thankful for all He gives us.


Let a three-foot onion serve as a reminder that God sends blessings that we do not deserve.