Seed Potatoes

 

“It’s time!”  I announced to my children.  “I need help planting potatoes this evening.”

Anna and Victoria looked a little excited, Elliot a little less so and Vincent did not look particularly pleased.  Anna said, “I need to practice flute, so I can’t really help.”

"That’s OK,” I said, “the rest of us will take care of it.”

After supper we walked down to the garden.  It was a cool evening and I had already made rows for the seed potatoes.

“Why did you cut the potatoes in pieces?”  Elliot wondered.

“It helps us cut more potatoes from each seed potato,” I told him.  “Some of the seed potatoes are pretty big and have several eyes on them and each eye has the ability to grow into a potato plant.”

“I want one!  I want one!”  Elise was definitive that she was going to help.  Then, she proceeded to put the piece given to her right on top of another potato.

“No, Leesy,” Victoria told her.  “You need to space them out.  Like this.”

I like planting potatoes.  Smelling the fresh spring air and not battling heat make it one of the nicer things to do in the garden.  Later, when the temperatures reach the 90s, it isn’t quite as much fun to do the necessary parts of gardening.

Planting things in the soil always makes me think of what Jesus said.  “Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24)

Every gardener knows that gardening is about giving up something to gain something more.  If you plant a half pound of bean seed or 20 pounds of potatoes, you expect to get much more at the time of harvest than what was planted in the first place.       

Jesus was talking of His own sacrifice.  We are coming up on Good Friday and a time when we remember Him walking to the cross to give up His life so that we might have life. 

We were – we are -- broken people.  God in His love and wisdom looked into this world and realized that the only solution for our brokenness was for Him to come into the world and be broken for us.  Only then could we be made whole.

We too are called to follow in our Master’s footsteps.  We need to die to ourselves so that we can live for Him and bear a plentiful harvest.

Jesus became like us so that He could bring us Shalom.  We must be willing to share in His brokenness so that we too can bring healing to our little corner of the world.