Sewing God's Garden

In the midst of this most trying week, I took time out to plant a vegetable garden in my back yard. While I was working away, my thoughts took me back to when I was growing up and it seemed I was reliving part of the lessons learned from watching and helping my father plant our family gardens from many years ago.

He always said that there may come a day when only those people who are able to provide for themselves by growing their food will not suffer. All of the rest, we will have to try to help as best we can.

That got me to thinking, sometime around my third row of onions, that the same holds true for what I call "God's second greatest gift to man", the first being Jesus Himself, and that is our free will.

I believe Our Lady holds this same view because every time, in my own discernment, She has placed a task before me She has always said "please do this". She has not once just told me to do anything. She has always said "please".

This tells me that She places a great deal of respect to the fact that we all have free will. She knows that it is only through the exercise of our own free will that God's plans have any real chance of being carried out and enduring. I think it was John 15:16-17 where Jesus says that we should go forth and bear fruit but that our fruit must endure. It is only if we honestly and willingly act upon what we feel is God's plan that it has any hope of enduring. We have to commit to what we give back to God, or do at the behest of Our Lady, if it is to take root and endure.

Free will is the seed of faith God places in each of us at the moment of conception. If we learn to give this seed of faith back to God in our daily lives, much like a child willingly offers you a bite of their cookie, it endures and we, in turn, become part of God's light of hope in this world. It then becomes our duty and privilege to assist those around us. Through the good example of our daily lives, we show those, who do not yet know the true value of their free will, The Way, The Truth, and The Life.

Please don't look for others to sew your seeds for you. They just won't grow and endure if you don't do it yourself. Make God's will your own and really learn what it means when we pray:

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.