Planting Seeds In Imperfect Gardens

We have been taught in many places that acting in faith is like planting a seed. But sometimes we want to make sure our little garden is just right before we plant that seed. We might spend hours researching proper gardening techniques, importing special clay from Lebanon, installing redundant watering systems, field testing different scarecrow designs, drawing up greenhouse specs. Meanwhile that little seed is just sitting there. Even if we were to design the perfect garden, it's not going to stay that way. Weeds are still going to find their way in, pests are still going to try to sneak off with our unripened fruit, the sun will blaze too hot, the frost will bite too early, we'll get either too much rain or not enough. If we are delaying our act of faith until we are sure that our success is guaranteed, we are destined for disappointment. Because either we'll always find faults with the garden we are preparing and thus never plant the seed at all, or we'll plant it because we think we've thought of everything and then get blindsided by a hurricane, or the neighbor's dog will break through the fence and trample our plants, or the plants will be attacked by some weird fungus we've never heard of. The point is, the act of faith is like planting a seed because there are so many unknown variables, so many things beyond our control could go wrong, but we plant it anyway. We have faith. We have faith that when weeds come along, we'll have the strength and willpower to root them out. We have faith that our little plant is going to make it through the heat and the cold, the dry and the wet, the good and the bad. And if our plant dies before our fruit is fully grown, then we have faith to go out and get another seed and plant again. The person with the most fruit is the one who did not get hung up on whether or not they had the perfect garden or were the perfect gardener, or got discouraged when life frequently and brutally laughed at their puny little garden and did everything it could to sabotage it. The person with the most fruit is the one who kept planting those seeds, pulling those weeds, chasing off those birds. We have to become comfortable with the fact that not every act of faith is going to pan out, just like not every seed we plant will ultimately bear fruit. A life filled with acts of faith is necessarily a life that is also filled with failures and disappointment, but that is not all. Yes, not every act of faith will bear fruit and that would be a tragedy if we only ever exercised faith the one time. But just as a faith filled life is littered with the dried up husks of past failures, it is also bursting with all of the hard won fruits of our labors. And besides, our failures are not as fruitless as they may first appear. Even if our seed of faith withered and died before we could see any fruit, the fact that the plant grew at all changed some aspects of the soil, maybe softened it or altered its chemical composition, and in a broader sense, it likely taught us valuable lessons on how not to grow a plant that will make our future efforts more likely to succeed. We don't act in faith and we don't plant seeds because the fruit is guaranteed. Planting one seed is not going to magically make our life perfect. Acting in faith cannot give us the best life, but we hope that it can help us to have a better life. Perfection is unattainable in this life but improvement is possible. If we keep planting those seeds one at a time, then our lives will change because of those acts of faith - they may get harder and probably stranger but they will also get better. We can keep holding out for that one magic fruit that will remove all fear and worry and doubt and disappointment from our lives, or we can fill our gardens and our storehouses with all kinds of fruit, some of them small or lumpy or misshapen, but all of them the sweeter and more beloved because we grew them ourselves.