Kids’ Page - Lessons from Garden

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November 2000

Kids’ Page

Lessons from Garden

by Mrs. Anne Groenenboom

One sunny Saturday morning, Chris stared gloomily out his window. Today, Dad and Mum were having a day in the garden, in which everyone, except for Joel, would have plenty to do. Mum came and stood beside him.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day, Chris! I hope we can get all those gardens cleared out, don’t you?”

“It’s going to be too hot out there, just like yesterday,” Chris grumbled. “We’ll all be sick and sunburnt tonight, if we go outside!”

“The forecast says it’ll be cooler today,” Mum replied. “We’ll wear hats and put on plenty of sunblock, so we’ll be OK... besides Dad and I have planned to work in the shade in the middle of the day, while it’s hot.”
Chris sighed. There was obviously no escape from what promised to be a horrible day. Mum sent him to call Amy and Carla, while she got breakfast ready.

As Chris went past the bathroom, he could hear Dad singing. How could Dad sound so happy when there was so much work to be done? At breakfast time, as Mum and Dad discussed their plans for the day, Chris listened miserably.

“You don’t look too happy, Chris!” Dad commented. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t feel like working in the garden. I’d rather we went for a family picnic,” Chris replied.

“Well, Chris, this work just has to be done. We missed out on doing all the gardening last summer, because it was so hot and we went to the pool each Saturday... and after that we went on holidays. We had all the fun then, so now we have to work!” Dad reminded him.

“It won’t be too bad, Chris, if we all get in and help. You might be surprised at the end of the day that you’ve actually enjoyed it!” Mum told him, but Chris still looked very doubtful.

After breakfast, all the household jobs were done very quickly and as soon as Joel had settled down for his morning sleep, Dad herded the children outside and told them what their tasks would be. Carla had the easy job of putting weeds and clippings into the wheelbarrow, but Chris and Amy were expected to help with the weeding.

“There’s a real jungle in here,” Chris complained from under a huge daisy bush. “There’s a geranium growing up through this bush and its branches are going everywhere, too... and there’s a lot of grass and weeds growing up through them as well.”

“You’d better weed over there, while we clip the daisy back and pull the geranium out. Then it will be easier for you to pull the grass out,” Mum told him and Chris turned around to find another huge clump of grass and weeds waiting for him. He tugged at a large clump of grass and it suddenly came out of the ground, showering him with dirt. Chris spluttered and brushed the dirt off his face. Amy giggled, but soon stopped when Mum gave her a warning look. She knew how Mum felt about people who laughed when things went wrong for other people.

Dad cut back the daisy branches and pulled at the long trailers of the geranium, which was also growing through all the other plants and even up through a tree.

“It’s a pity we have to take the geranium out, because it looks so pretty,” Amy commented.

“Yes, it may look pretty, but it will eventually kill all the other plants off, if we leave it like that,” Mum replied. ”We’ll grow a cutting from this plant and put it near the back fence, then it can look beautiful without being such a problem.”

Soon it was time for morning tea and they sat in the shade to rest. When Joel woke up, Dad put his playpen in the shade too and the little boy played happily with his toys. Mum looked at the part of the garden which they’d already weeded and said how happy she was with the work they had done. Chris turned around to have a look too and he was quite surprised to see how good the garden looked.

“You and Amy have done a great job weeding that garden, Chris,” Dad commented. “It won’t take us too long to get the next bit done and then we can work over there in the shade while it’s hot.”

Carla took time off to climb into the playpen and play with Joel for a while, but Chris and Amy kept on working, eager to get the garden finished. It wasn’t long before they were able to stand back and admire their handiwork and after a cool drink and another short rest, they moved to the shady side of the house and set to work again.

“We make a good team, don’t we!” Dad stated as he collected all the cut-off branches and raked up the weeds. “Just think how long it would take one person to do all this work!”

Carla helped Mum get lunch ready and they all sat in the shade once more, enjoying salad sandwiches, followed by Mum’s delicious chocolate chip cookies. Soon Joel was rubbing his eyes sleepily, so Mum put him into his porta-cot on the front veranda and it wasn’t long before the little boy was asleep. Everyone got back to work again and in a couple of hours, the whole garden was finished. The girls helped Mum to plant some geranium cuttings in a pot and then they helped Mum to get the afternoon tea ready, while Chris helped Dad to chop up the big branches and sort through the huge pile of weeds ready for the compost heap.

“If we leave those bits of geraniums and some of these weeds in the compost, we’ll have them growing everywhere again, so we’ll put them in a box in the shed and let them die off before we put them out in the garbage,” Dad told Chris.

As they rested in the shade, the Mum and Dad thanked the children for all the work they had done that day. “From now on, we’ll try to do some gardening each Saturday, so that we don’t have such a big job in future,” Mum said. “We should still be able to have picnics or days at the pool, even if we leave a bit later.”

“I guess we should have made a plan like that last summer,” Chris commented.

“Well, we were rather busy last summer with a new baby and it certainly was too hot to work outside during the heat wave. It was something that couldn’t be helped,” Dad replied.

“You know, the bible tells us that it’s not right to only want all the good things for ourselves and I guess this proves that it’s true, doesn’t it!” Mum remarked. The children nodded.

“It’s funny how the garden looked all right, until we got close to it. The flowers were nice, but underneath it was a big mess,” Chris said thoughtfully.

“Sometimes our lives are like that,” Dad stated. “Things may look all right on the outside, but if there’s no love for the Lord and no love for each other, it’s a bad situation.”

“We can certainly learn lots of lessons from our garden!” Mum remarked. “If you children had made a big fuss about helping today, we’d all have had a miserable time, but it seems to me that we all enjoyed working together, even if it was hard work.”

“People in a church family have to learn to work together too,” Dad added. “If people want their own way and refuse to work along with others, it can spoil the relationships within a church, just the way it can in a family.”

“In our garden, all the plants wanted to do their own thing, especially the geraniums and daisies and look at the mess we had to clean up,” Chris exclaimed.

“We can learn something from the compost heap, too,” Dad reminded the children.

”Remember how we sorted out the things that would keep on growing in the compost, Chris? If we’d left them there, that compost would be useless, because all those little pieces of plants would grow again where we didn’t want them. That’s a bit like sin in our lives... our sins may seem small and insignificant, but they keep on growing, if we don’t do anything about them. We may not see them, but they’re still there and one day, they may take over our lives. It’s best to deal with them while they’re still small.”

“I’ve really enjoyed today and I think I’ve learnt something too!” Chris stated and Amy nodded in agreement.

SOME THINGS TO DO:

Have a look around your garden and see if you can find any hidden jungles. Take notice of how each plant wants to do its own thing.
Remember that all those plants that cause problems (weeds included) were once part of God’s wonderful and good creation. It was only when sin came into the world that these plants became trouble makers.
Discuss this story with Mum and Dad and see how it applies to your life.
Read Romans 6:23 and discuss what it means with your family.

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