Tomatoes

Since mum and dad have been away I've been looking after their fish and the garden. It's not hard. I just go around every Wednesday as I would normally if they were there, on my way to prayer. The girls play (well, Rachel lies around while Sophie plays) and I make sure things are still alive. As a result, I've been lucky enough to reap the benefits of the garden. 

I've collected an abundance of passion fruit (see what some of them turned into here), and most recently, these tomatoes have decided to turn a delicious red color. 

As I've been looking after these tomatoes waiting for them to ripen, I've had to do a bit of work. The tomatoes are really heavy, and as they grow, they weigh down the vines. If you don't stake them up and tie them, quite tightly, to the stakes, the tomatoes grow on the ground and end up rotting. 

I was thinking about this in relation to my own walk with God. Sometimes I'm growing like the vines. I am going to church, bible study, praying, so I have fertile ground to grow in. Things are green. Then I'm producing fruit, meeting up with girls, encouraging other Christians, trying to have spiritual conversations with mums at the park. 

The thing is, that this fruit producing process gets heavy. Even if you are growing in good soil, you need to be staked up to be able to bear the weight. I need to be tightly bound to Gods word and walking with him daily or I will be like the tomato plants with the fruit on the ground: bearing fruit, but it's rotting quickly. 

I wonder how tightly I'm staked to God. Time to hide his word in my heart and meditate on his marvelous deeds (Psalm 119). Daily.