Some of us pounce on the punch line. An inept gardener, I’m thrilled when a plant blooms in spite of me. There in my raggedy, bug-bitten patch, a scarlet spike, a creamy-crimson rose! I s’pose I could worry about being the choked or withered seed, but fretting about anxiety seems redundant.
Even seasoned farmers must leave a lot to chance—they can’t control the weather, weeds, or various calamities that could befall something as small and unprotected as a seed. The crop, like our lives, must rely heavily on grace.
The stretch from metaphor to experience shouldn’t be too long. Against the wildly improbable odds, the Word sometimes blossoms in us. In every setting—filling stations, hospitals, prisons, bars, retirement centers, offices, stores—kindness flowers. Teachers, addiction counsellors, social workers, parents, therapists, spiritual directors all focus on peoples’ innate goodness and try to reflect it back.
So maybe today’s parable, brought to us by Luke, is about the slow, mysterious working of unearned grace. Even through our cracks and weeds and fissures, a green shoot can sometimes sprout. “God, who gives life to all things” (1 Tim 6:13) compensates for flaws.
Jesus, ever the storyteller, knew how to make a dramatic point. Once mistaken for a gardener, (Jn. 20:15) he also told the parable of wheat and weeds growing up together in a non-dualistic field (Mt. 13:24-43). Facing opposition and betrayal, Jesus modeled how to learn from the thirsty deserts and dark crevices of negative experience.
And he might reach into our rockiest chasms to retrieve the frail and fragile tendril.
Kathy Coffey, “Grace in the Garden,” from the September 2023 issue of Give Us This Day http://www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN) 888-259-8470
Kathy Coffey 
This is so good, Kathy. I read it in Give Us This Day this morning and then had the happy re-visit of it in your blog now. Thank you for sharing your personal grace and your gifted writing abilities with those of us so much in need of them. be well, Joyce
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