Devotionals for the Heart: A Life Lesson taught by gardening

Breaking Up The Fallow Ground
A devotional by Patrick E. Craig

As the first buds began to form on the trees here in Idaho, it’s time to start thinking about working on my garden. You gardeners out there know the routine—bringing in compost, rototilling, getting the seedlings started, getting the watering system up and running, putting in new plots – it’s a lot of work to get ready.

As I was thinking about all I had to do I remembered something I learned years ago at our last home. We always had a big garden but we never grew melons because we lived in a foggy area that did not have a lot of sunny days. One year I planted a Crane melon plant in a small area of my garden. That particular melon was developed specifically for my county and it produced three delicious, sweet melons. So I decided the next year to year to expand and put in a whole melon patch. That meant I had to tear down the fence around part of my garden and add a new ten-foot by twenty-foot plot. The place I chose had been a pasture for years. I used it mostly to let my sheep graze, an unused area full of tall grass and weeds that I occasionally mowed down so the sheep would eat.

In order to prepare the ground, I had to weed-eat 200 square feet of tall grass down to the roots, and then get out the rototiller and turn it over. The roots of the grass were deep and intertwined and the soil packed down and it was real work, as my aching legs and back attested when I finished. After I tilled it twice, I raked out all the leaves, and clumps of grass roots that had been torn loose and turned over. As I uncovered the plot, I realized that it was dark, rich, fertile soil; perfect for my melons and whatever else I wanted to plant there. There it was, a goldmine of nutrients that had been just sitting fallow for eleven years!

As I worked the soil, I began to think about the condition of my own “garden”, and then I heard that still, small voice speaking to my spirit. “Is there any area in your life that has lain dormant? Let me break up the fallow ground of your heart, so that you might bear fruit, thirty, sixty, one hundred fold.”

Do you have fallow areas in your life that need plowing up so they can be made available to the planting of the Holy Spirit? I sure do.

"Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you."~Hosea 10:12 (KJV)

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Author Bio: 

Patrick E. Craig is a lifelong writer and musician who left a successful songwriting and performance career in the music industry to follow Christ in 1984. 

In 2011 he signed a three-book deal with Harvest House Publishers to publish his Apple Creek Dreams series. His current series is The Paradise Chronicles. The first book in the series, The Amish Heiress, a romantic suspense novel, was published by Patrick's company, P&J Publishing, in August of 2015 and remained on the Amazon Top 100 best sellers list in three categories for seven months.

The second book in the series, The Amish Princess, a historical romance novel, was released in December of 2016 and was on Amazon's Hot New Releases for over a month. Harlequin recently purchased the print rights for both books for their Walmart Amish series. Patrick also just released Cracking The Indie Egg—A Recipe For Publishing Your Own Book and it is available in most major digital bookstores.

Patrick and his wife Judy, make their home in Idaho. They have two married children and five grandchildren. Patrick is represented by the Steve Laube Agency.

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Connect with Patrick:
Website - www.patrickecraig.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PatrickECraig
Twitter - https://twitter.com/PatrickECraig
Amazon Author page - http://tinyurl.com/n6sfagg

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