Last month, we were looking at the first letter of our acronym, BLOOM, and learning ways to Be Mindful of our Hearts. On May 6th, we learned how not to quit when the harvest seems underwhelming, and also how to be patient in the wait.
Today, we are finishing our series on “Be Mindful of your Heart.” The lessons of heart and soul care get a little more personal and maybe even a little more painful. But, oh, the rewards we will gain if we lean into them!
Lesson 4: Be willing to be opened.
Just like a gardener must crack through the surface of soil and even hollow out a new space for planting, so must we surrender our hearts to God our Gardener, allowing Him access to its spaces. When I first received the gift of salvation through Jesus, I felt as if I were removing the manhole cover from my sewage-filled heart. I had kept that cover on tight. I was too ashamed to let God in, and I certainly wasn’t going to expose my dirt to Him! But when I learned that God loved me so much that He allowed His very own Son to pay for every bit of my sin, I was moved to remove the lid. I opened my heart and soul, and I invited God into my mess, tentatively assured that God would and wanted to clean up my mess. And that event brings me to our last (and truly beautiful) lesson from a farmer.
Lesson 5: Allow yourself to be stirred.
When a gardener is preparing to plant, she begins by turning over the soil. As she stirs up the soil, it gains several benefits:
- Aeration – air flow through the soil allows roots to dig in deep and nutrients to thrive.
- Avoiding compaction – Just like compacted soil limits root growth and inhibits water absorption for plants, a heart that isn’t willing to be stirred up can grow hard against God’s seeds of truth and be unable to receive the flow of life He wants to pour into it.
- Availability of enhanced nutrients – This fact is so cool. When a gardener turns over the soil, she mixes in compost and organic amendments. This mixing process enhances the nutrients of the soil and helps the plants to be healthier. But did you see that little detail? She mixes in the compost, the discarded materials from a meal, the trash. God does the same thing.
What we see as trash to be discarded, God sees as treasure when surrendered to Him. In the hands of the Gardener, even the things we value least about ourselves God will mix with good soil and make it all even richer. When I first opened the manhole of my life to God, I was appalled to reveal the sewage below the surface. I knew God’s standards well enough to understand that I had done many things I shouldn’t and not done some things that I should. But rather than hiding it all or casting it away, I learned that God wanted me to hand it all to Him. How about you?
So often we want to purge everything we consider bad. To get rid of it. But what if we simply surrendered it? What if we released it to the hands of the Gardener and let Him create something new from it? Something that not only would render us healthier but even more fruit-bearing.
Is there something you despise about yourself? Something within you that you wish you could discard? A trait, a memory, something done to you, or something done by you? Don’t strive to be rid of it. Surrender it. Give it to God and ask Him to amend it, to mix it in with His grace, love, goodness, and His genius, and make something new and everlasting. It’s what He wants to do. He wants you to place yourself in the hands of the Gardener.
Friends, in this sowing season, may you see a great yield from all that you plant, not only in your home garden, but also in the garden of your heart. May you rest in the grip of the Gardener, being mindful of your heart, and may He reap a harvest of righteousness from and for you. And join us next week on the blog when we let God search our hearts.
— Linda R. Maynard for The Sublime Soiree (c) May 2025
