I didn’t think I’d be able to have a garden this year.

We’re moving. Moving during the summer, which means that anything planted this spring would be unseen by those who plant it.

It’s been a difficult spring as I’ve looked out over the yard that through times of hospitality and quarantine was a space of growth and renewal. A space that I’ve tended, sweated in, laughed in, cried in, and dug my hands into.

I’ve seen the growth in apple trees, the cutting out of dead lilac branches, seen my children steal the Sweet Million tomatoes that were planted especially for them. They would wander into the back yard, detour through the garden, and meet me at the door, hands cupped over their mouths as they grinned with tomato filled mouths.

It’s hard not to plant. To go through the process of uprooting and not see what will grow in the empty, waiting space.

I grieve my garden as I can’t yet grieve the leaving of my life here. Friends, church, ministry, tears, laughter, potlucks, baseball games under blankets or coated in mosquito spray. The campus where God reignited a dream within me to return to teaching. All of these things are a grieving that will come. I can feel it lying under the surface for the days when the boxes are packed and last hugs are given.

It is hard to stop tending a place that God has called you out of.

As I wander through my garden, grieving it on the surface and so many things underneath, I pull weeds and try to prepare the soil for whoever comes next. I wonder what seeds will be planted and who will plant them.

God tells us that there is a time to plant and a time to harvest. In ministry and all the places we live and serve, there are times of planting. Sometimes we see the harvest and revel in the glory of that. Sometimes we don’t. But there is always a harvest, even if out of sight and out of reach of our planting season.

As I wandered through my garden space, uprooting and brooding, a large-ish plant caught me unawares.

Celery.

Celery that I planted last year, that did not do well and did not grow.

Over in the next row, a large bush of parsley, curly and arrogant in its May greenness.

This morning as my daughter walked alongside me, one of my gardening gloves shared on her hand, I was able to show her carrots. Involuntary, not of my planting, but because of the rhythm of how God made things to grow.

This space I have tended is God’s. I see it in this garden I grieve, yet that is thriving with life.

I see it in the promise of carrots that continue after I am gone. I see it in the growth of people as they know God better. I see it in a new space for people who struggle, my office used for the new work of God.

What a gift, to know that neither seeds nor harvest depend on me. It is the stability and promise of God that keeps the rhythm of his creation, of his people, moving inexorably towards him, towards renewal, restoration, towards harvest.

I am not the Sower. God holds all of us close and tends to us. We are planted beside others for a while to thrive, support against the winds of life, and be companions that make each other stronger.

God has reminded me that there is nothing untended by God. No one I leave, no one who leaves me, no church, no one, and no thing. Though I grieve, I have a deep reassurance from the God who gifted me with growth where I expected emptiness. This gift shows in something as small as a carrot seed that brings all the hope in the world.