God Doesn’t Have a Black Thumb

I love the idea of growing my own fruits and vegetables. Several times, I’ve had my husband build raised beds, pick up soil, or till the ground. Each growing season, I’ve checked tables for the right time to plant, the depth and spacing for each seed, and the covering or fertilizer needed. Then, in due time, after weeks of care, I reap the harvest.

Except…I don’t.

Something inevitably goes wrong, and I usually have no clue what it is. My first and only time to plant cherry tomatoes, they all split as they were growing. I had some beautiful squash coming up one summer, only to walk out one morning to a bed full of entirely dead plants. They had been perfectly fine the day before! Once, I planted blackberries, and I was thrilled they actually grew. But, before they were quite ready to pick (we hadn’t even had one yet), the ants and birds took them all.

Several varieties of lettuce have failed, usually eaten by some unknown critter. Rows of bean plants have sprouted all of a handful of edible beans - enough for about one serving. I successfully grew a robust and thriving cucumber vine once, which gave us more cucumbers than we could eat…if we had wanted to eat them, that is. Every one was bitter, no matter how long I left it on the vine.

My black thumb is pretty universally recognized in my house now, to the point that my husband won’t even let me touch plants he cares about. I overwater or underwater, over sun or under sun, but I never can find that Goldilocks spot that plants thrive in.

I have learned a couple of things from my catastrophic attempts at gardening, though. First of all, growing fruit, it seems, isn’t all that easy. Second, I’m clearly not capable of doing it on my own. Like, AT ALL. Not even a little bit.

I can’t help but think of my own literal fruit failures when I read Paul’s discussion of the fruits of the Spirit toward the end of chapter five of his letter to the church of Galatia. He begins that chapter, interestingly, with a discussion on freedom:

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). I’ve written before about this verse if you want to see more on it, but, in short, Paul is claiming, from earlier in the letter, that we are free from legalism. However, he also warns us to take care not to give up our freedom for the slavery of sin. He gives us a list of what he calls “acts of the flesh” in verse 19 of the chapter and then shares the fruits of the Spirit as the alternative and evidence we are “living by the Spirit” (v. 26).

So, here we have some basic instructions from Paul about being Christ-like. You should not walk in the flesh (satisfy your own wants), but you should walk by the Spirit (be obedient to what Jesus wants). Paul even gives us a list of these (not necessarily an exclusive one) for clarity: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

We can probably all agree these are good things to do, but I want to be clear: Paul isn’t saying, “Here is a list of things that will earn God’s love or your salvation, or even that are required for salvation.” Remember, the whole point of this chapter was that we are FREE from legalism (getting overly focused on following rules). Even though it may seem like he’s contradicting himself, he isn’t.

For followers of Jesus, it’s always all about the heart. Is my heart right? Am I doing something because I really love God and want to follow him, or am I doing it because I think I am supposed to or because it is expected of me? Jesus is pretty hard on people (especially religious leaders) whose hearts aren’t in it.

He calls the Pharisees (religious leaders of the time) “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean” (Matthew 23:27). These were people who followed the law meticulously, yet Jesus condemned them multiple times because they had no real love for God.

However, the fruits of the Spirit Paul lists are the good things that will show up in a life dedicated to following Christ. The more we devote our hearts to him, the more these fruits will naturally manifest in our lives. The fruit of the Spirit are not “rules” we have to follow, but rather the EVIDENCE of a life firmly rooted in Jesus.

I think the same two truths I learned from my own gardening “adventures” (that seems like a nice word for it) apply to the fruit of the Spirit as well.

Growing fruit isn’t all that easy. There are five million ways it can go wrong. Just like physical plants need tending, time, good soil, nutrients, and the right amount of sun and rain (I sound like I know what I’m talking about here, don’t I? Don’t be fooled!), so, too, do our spiritual lives. All kinds of things can distract us from hearing the Holy Spirit - politics, family strife, busyness, heartache, illness…the list goes on.

Every day, the world works to uproot us and separate us from the True Vine (that is, Jesus (John 15:1)). What is more, choosing to live by the Spirit is hard because it goes directly against our nature (the flesh). We WANT to be selfish. We WANT to respond in kind to those who are unkind to us. We WANT to feel justified in our anger or hatred of those whom we think have wronged us. We WANT to advance our career and status. Paul tells us if you “walk by the Spirit, [you] will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so you are not to do whatever you want” (Galatians 5:16-17). So, basically, for the fruit of the Spirit to flourish, we are going to have to work against both the world and ourselves. Sounds impossible, right?

That’s where my next lesson comes in: No one is capable of doing it on their own. We cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit on our own. Jesus tells us in John “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me” (John 15: 4). Alone, we cannot do it; with Jesus, we can. It’s that simple. He even promises “if you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15: 5). We have yet another reason to stop making excuses, and study God’s Word and pray and seek His will. God will show up for us. He will help us, and let me tell you he is a much better gardener than I am (and we all breathed a sigh of relief)! God doesn’t have a black thumb (I mean, hello, he did create all the things).

With God as our gardener, Jesus as our life-giving vine, and the Holy Spirit tending us daily, I think we will start to see more love budding in our lives, maybe harvest some patience and kindness when it's needed, and find joy and peace sprouting up when we least expect it.

We’ll just have to remember to keep our own black thumbs away from what God's planted in us.