Cultivation

"He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate-bringing forth food from the earth"- Psalm 104:14 (NIV).

A day in the garden is tranquil, therapeutic...for the soul. The body is a different story. Thigh muscles, I didn't know I had, were introducing themselves to me following a day of picking green beans. That's because I'm not using those same thigh muscles when I pick up a can of green beans in the grocery store. Gathering in food has become so effortless, mindless, that most of our children don't know where or how we really get our food. Some of our store bought food doesn't even look like real food: dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, waffle fries, fish sticks. No wonder children balk at the hot meal lines in our schools. We, as a people, in choosing the effortless path, have become soft and we're passing this heritage down to our children. We've softened in our physical life, but that same mindset has bled over into our spiritual life too. Do we cultivate, work at, feeding on the Word? Or do we, warm a pew every now and then, effortlessly, and call it being fed spiritually? Sadly, we pass that heritage down to our children, too. There's the easy way and the hard way: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). Cultivate the heritage you want to pass down, because life does depend on it.