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Monday, February 1, 2010

The Secret Garden of the Heart

I have thought a lot about two different scriptures. The first is found in Matthew 13:1-23 the second is Alma 32. Both of these chapters are parables relating to the growth of faint likened to the growth and harvest of plants.

One of the lessons I have learned as I have read and pondered about Matthew 13 is that the soil is like our own hearts. Our hearts, our character, our personality is the place the sower is trying to get the seeds of the Gospel truth to take root and grow. Each different type of soil has it's own problems. The reality is though, soil can be emended (a word that means to correct or improve). When I was growing up, we had two big problems in our fields. We had rocks, and they reproduced somehow because every spring for 40 years that my Father farmed, we would go out and 'pick rock' we would gather all the visible rocks out of the soil and pile them in a couple of rock piles in the field. Every year we did this and yet every year there were new rocks. I know now that it was because the frost over the winter would cause the soil to heave them up to the surface from deeper bedrock, but then, I swore it was supernatural. The other evil we found in our fields were bull thistle these were huge, we could spray them in some fields, but in others the spray would kill the crop along with the weed, so we had to sharpen shovels and cut them out just below the surface to kill them and keep them from growing back.  It was a lot of work.

Our lives are like this.  We have so many things that arise to distract us, and we have to pick the rocks, and root out the weeds in order to give place for the good things to grow in our hearts.  Our hearts are like our own Secret Garden.  A place where we cultivate and root out the ideas, interests, beliefs and hopes, we feel will best bring us happiness.  Each thought, hope or dream we cultivate in our garden grows up and bears specific fruit or gives forth a specific harvest.  We plant in our hearts faith in tithing and it grows, scripture study and it grows, kindness and it grows.

Alma 32 gives more insight as to what the end result of this will be.  We have a tree of life that grows up into a true hope and salvation.  The love of Christ, Charity.

I have to remember, that the main seed I  must plant in my heart to have this tree grow is found in Alma 33: 22-23