Working up my garden this Spring has again brought me face to face with a reality very present in this geographic area; limestone rocks. I remember mentioning in this column last year that our garden has more than its fair share of rocks. Picking rocks has become a new reality for me since beginning gardening in PA in my adulthood. Growing up gardening in Florida sand, the only obstacles one came across was the occasional palmetto root. Frost and its effect on rocks in the ground were an unknown concern there.

 While roto-tilling this week, I came across the same underground boulders that I have come to know the location of the past four years since beginning to till the plot. But I also discovered a few new ones I hadn't encountered before. I was able to dig some of them up, measuring around a foot or so in diameter, but some of them are immovable, at least so far. I'm not certain whether I am beginning to till deeper, or if the rocks are beginning to surface as frost moves them up, but one way or another, more obstacles are "popping up".

With most any life experience since beginning to pastor, spiritual parallels and analogies seem to come easily as I reflect on the daily events of my life. It's a "curse" (or blessing, depending on your perspective) that comes with the territory, I guess. The rocks were no exception. As I thought about the new rocks that had cropped up in my garden, it dawned on me that they are not "new" at all. Rather, they have always been there, but I have only now discovered them. I think the same process happens in our spiritual lives as well. We work at rooting out things like bitterness and envy from our lives only to realize some other obstacle to faithfulness that crops up. Sometimes it seems as if we are picking out the same old rocks and they just keep resurfacing after we thought they had been rooted out. Other times, as we grow spiritually, becoming more aware of God's way and God's desires for us, we suddenly see rocks that we didn't know were there before.

While we may be tempted to get discouraged by these unwanted "crops", in reality we are becoming a more fertile seedbed where God's Spirit can bring about the desired fruitfulness of which our lives are capable. This is a reason to rejoice!

As you work in your gardens, flowerbeds, or flowerpots this Spring, think of the excitement God must feel as he works the soil of our lives, envisioning the fragrant and delicious fruits that will be possible by means of cultivation, and think how much easier that cultivation becomes as the rocks disappear one by one.

May we be blessed as we participate with God's work in our lives by reflecting on, and digging a bit, into our lives to see what rocks we may find.

Pastor Carl