My life and the annoying French bean plant.

 

I am new to gardening and all things green. The experiment began with Cress, which is possibly the easiest thing to grow. The feeling of success propelled me to greater heights in this little gardening project and now we have quite a few more interesting things in our garden. One such plant is the simple French bean or the green bean. I bought a bunch of seedlings from someone and planted them in my own backyard. In case you do not know much about French beans, they are a vining plant. This means as they grow they climb up a support structure. So I got some bamboo canes and built a little wigwam (conical structure) for them to climb. I had also read that these young saplings are prone to bird attacks and particularly pigeons, of which our garden seems to have an abundant supply. So I bought some green netting and covered the wigwam with it to ensure no pesky pigeon made a breakfast of my little experiment.

 

The seedlings grew to plants and began their interesting climb. New leaves began to show and little white flowers opened their gorgeous faces. Then I noticed something unplanned. The plants had begun climbing up the wrong structure. Their little tendrils and vines had gripped onto the green netting meant to protect them, rather than the big wigwam that I had built. Now, much like me, you too might not think much about this. “They are climbing after all” is what I thought. But on the other side I had another bunch that I had grown without the netting (I had not bought enough at the time). They seemed sturdier and to be growing better, taller and faster. The vines on the first plant were going all over the place and were blowing with every wind because the netting was not really providing the sturdiness that was essential. I decided it was time to remove that netting. What followed was an annoyingly long hour of unraveling each bean plant from the netting without damaging it. It was nearly a wasteful hour, except that, as I was busy with the task, the thought behind this write up warmed my heart and grew my own faith.

 

That afternoon I was reminded of how I am invited into a relationship with the God of heaven, the sovereign King of eternity. It is a relationship by faith and born of faith. This precious relationship is through the forgiveness and adoption by the Father, forged through the finished work of Jesus the Son, and perfected and guaranteed by the sanctifying indwelling of the Holy Spirit within my heart and life. It is this powerful and undeserved relationship that is the sturdy structure around which my feeble faith is meant to wrap itself and grow to newer heights. As the structure pulls my faith on upwards the fruit begins to show in my life. This same God who has provided this unshakeable sturdy relationship for my faith has also provided for my life His wise and loving commands. One reason is that they are to protect and guard my heart and life from all evils that may destroy or hamper the growing of my faith as it clings to and grows along its relationship with God.

 

I thought about how many times I have read and reduced the Bible to a book of rules and not seen first the beauty of the relationship. I was reminded of times when, as a husband, a father, a brother, a friend and even a teacher of the word I may have portrayed the Bible foremost as a book of rules for better living. In all those moments and phases a tendril of my life had grabbed on to the netting. A good, important and a Godly thing, but not one that could either hold or grow my faith or anyone else’s faith the way God wants to. In fact, when I reduce the bible to merely a book of do’s and don’ts devoid of the relationship with a loving God as its central theme, my faith gets stunted into a judgmental religion or an empty ritual.

 

But God, in His great love spends that “hour” undoing all my clinging to the law and weird unruly growth. He sets my weak heart free from judgmental and ritualistic tendencies that creep in so often. And then I get to cling to Him once again. And when I cling to the love of God in Christ and when I cling to the work of Spirit (walking in step with Him) I find myself deeply desiring a better understanding of, and greater obedience to His word. Then the protective nature of His word takes its rightful place, role and meaning in my life and my faith is grown up the trellis/wigwam of a living and loving relationship with Him once again – the way it was meant to be all along.