Fertile Ground, part 8

Mulch

Mulch is a beautiful thing. Not just because it makes things look better either. Mulch is beneficial for the garden in many ways. It helps to keep the weeds down. Soil retains moisture longer when it is covered with mulch. It makes it easier to mow. It slowly adds organic matter to the soil as it breaks down. I could go on.
After talking about it for far too long, I finally brought home a truck load of beautiful mulch this weekend and put it on my newly weeded flower bed. And it looks great. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last forever. As it breaks down, or blows away, it must be replaced. And the weeds do still get through. It does make the job easier, but it is not a one-time, fix-it-and-forget-it solution.
The things that we do to maintain our relationship with our Heavenly Father are not one-time, fix-it-and-forget-it tasks either. It takes daily, sometimes hourly or minute by minute upkeep or the weeds get in fast and ferocious. Can you imagine if David said “Maybe next week I will pray to you”? Or imagine if Deuteronomy 6 (the quintessential passage for Christian homeschool parents) told us to teach our children about the Bible only when we felt like it or happened to remember? We can’t read a chapter one week or memorize a verse one month and expect it to last us indefinitely. That is why we have countless examples in scripture of godly people who diligently sought after God’s face faithfully. To many of them it was more important than food or even life itself.
Do we feel that way? Are we willing to carve out a little time for daily maintenance? Or, like the mulch, do we just want to throw a little down and expect miracles?
God’s Word encourages us over and over to keep scripture before our eyes. There are 774, 746 verses in the Bible. Go ahead and count them if you don't believe me! Let's make a commitment together to memorize one verse every day for the next month, okay?