Saturday, August 14, 2010

Gardening thought

So I'm in the garden this morning, and our garden is producing like nobody's business. We've got about four weeks worth of "daily bread" provided on the vine via cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, and I'm not even counting summer squash and zucchini.

We have a family gathering tonight at my sister's place, and I blithely said two days ago, "We'll bring a salad" -- thinking that we could just whip something up out of the garden. I went to the garden this morning and picked a little of this, a little of that, brought it in the house and found a recipe using most of it. Whipped it up, and ... bleah. It's not bad, it's just not zippy. Snapping. Amazing. Delectable. It's sort of like the fried-potatoes-and-leftover-hamburger-patties of summer salads. I wish I could totally start over.

Isn't this how we are? God has provided amazing bounty and beauty. A few hours ago I was totally blown away by the way God has served up our incredible garden. But now I'm wanting to pitch the whole thing because my taste buds aren't being titillated the way I had hoped.

So often God provides far more than I need, and actually far more than I ask, but the packaging is wrong, or worse yet the way I fix up what God has provided doesn't turn out like I hoped. So I get down about it and want to pitch the whole works and start over. Talk about ungrateful.

So I'm going to try one more thing -- a little dill -- and if that doesn't work I'll bring it to the gathering tonight and say, "All this stuff came out of our garden -- it's pretty amazing. But next time I think I'll try a different dressing." And everyone will eat it, and someone will probably have a suggestion that would fix the whole thing. And next time it will be better. Or not. But God has still provided far more than I could have asked or imagined, and I am determined to remember to be grateful.

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