Planting Trees or Planting Flowers

#130

Friend,

My parents are both retired and love to show me the most recent flowers and landscaping they’ve done. When they offered to help us with our flower bed, my wife and I accepted, but I had a request, “I want something that looks great, but doesn’t take a lot of effort.”

Don’t we all!

In life, we look for something beautiful and easy. We want the fruits of a garden without the toil most often required. We’d rather plant a tree than tend a flower bed.

After a little bit of time, a tree takes of itself. Sure, in the beginning, it takes work, care, and protection, but the vast majority of a tree’s life is self-sustaining.

A flower bed is entirely different. It takes constant care as you weed, prune, and water it. Every year, you have to clean it out and plant new annuals (you might have perennials that will regrow the next year, and that’s really all I know about that.). It requires tending.

Tending, however, can be a gift and a delight.

My parents want to show me their landscaping, not only because it is beautiful, but because they tended it to beauty. They aren’t showing me mere beauty, but they are showing me a beautiful partnership between the land, the Lord, and the Laborer, and they are proud and delighted.

While you may want something that looks great and doesn’t take a lot of effort, the most rewarding and beautiful things rarely meet that category. And so, today, I invite you (since you certainly aren’t tending any flower beds outside today) to tend to one of your relationships that you’ve put aside for a little bit. You’ll be glad you did.

Love,

Aaron

P.S. My parents did help us with some wonderful less-maintenance flowers up front (I have no idea what they planted since I decided to not hold the names of flowers, bushes, and trees in my head), and my wife tended to the garden, watering it and weeding it when she could. Maybe I’ll help a little more this Spring.