Life is More Than a Box of Chocolates

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Gualberto 107.

Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! Matthew 13:8

The neighbor behind us has a large field with about 5 horses. When it rains, as it is today, water drains from her yard into ours. We have attempted to build up the back of our yard to keep this from happening, but it can only hold back so much.

Then I realized something I hadn't thought of before. That water is good for our yard, it's rich with horse poop! Now, I don't know the science of it, but I have seen this in action. Each spring my husband plants a garden, and it always produces way more food than we can eat. And his tomatoes, well, they are something to be envied. The first year he had a garden, his tomatoe plants got about 7 feet tall! Nobody could believe it. But there is a secret: it's the dirt he uses. It's composed of one third horse manure!

That's just what life is like. We know the hazards of this life, so we put up our own protective devices. Sometimes they work, and sometimes, when the rain is either too long or too hard, those protective devices are just no use. But what if we looked at the hazards as horse poop? What if those hazards are the very things that God is using to make our lives fertile ground for the truths He wants to teach us?

I know I have some horse poop in my life that I put up damns to block out. There's difficult relationships, problems with my kids, issues in marriage...  the list could go on. Sure, life would be simpler and merrier without those things, but my soil becomes infertile, and infertile soil can't produce much fruit. When we protect ourselves from the things God is using to make us more like Him, it's a stark contrast to what He wants in our lives. His purpose and joy is to make us fruitful. So, you see life is more than a box of chocolates. It's rich with horse poop!