I planted a vegetable garden this year, and I’m so proud of it. Now that it’s summer, my vegetable garden is almost overflowing. I go out every day to tend it, watering and weeding, admiring the cucumbers, examining the zucchini, smelling the tomatoes and petting the parsley.
But for all my care and attention, I’m not the one who makes the garden grow. God does.
That’s the wonder of it. Through the miracles we mere human beings call light, water, earth and air, God is transforming the tiny dry seeds into a bounty of beautiful, delicious, nutritious vegetables. All I have to do is tend the garden and harvest its riches, while God, through nature, does the rest.
Yes, God quietly brings forth abundance every day in our gardens and in our lives. Everything we have–our food, our families, our money, our lives, everything–comes from our endlessly generous and loving God, who is always at work all around us.
This message is excerpted from the July 2015 Women of the ELCA stewardship devotion by Audrey Riley. Today we remember Lawrence, deacon, martyr, who died in 258.
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