The Push Plow

Even though the traditional gardening calendar calls for planting potatoes on Valentine's Day, it was a day too filled with other things to get to the garden.  But, today was different.  I got out the old push plow, busted open some rows, dropped those sulfur covered potato cuttings in the dirt, and covered them up with a push of dirt from the boot.  I have been pushing a push plow since the first parsonage and the first garden some fifty years ago.  As I was pushing through the dirt today, I remembered those gardens and Jesus saying, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God."  (Luke 9:62)      

He might have also said, "No one who puts and hand to the plow and looks back will break a straight furrow."  It was something I learned a long time ago after finishing up a row and looking back to see one as crooked as a snake trailing off behind me in the dirt.  To plow a straight furrow it is necessary to look out there ahead where the furrow is to end.  Looking at the place where the plow breaks the dirt open, or looking a few feet ahead of the plow means a rambling crooked row.  The straight furrow comes from not being distracted by what is close at hand and pushing on with single mindedness toward the goal out there at the end of the row.    

Surely, there is a lesson about living out there in the garden where the push plow is working in the dirt.  We need to keep our eye on the goal of Home instead of all the tempting things around us which promise blessings in life.  The Apostle Paul had it right when he wrote, "...but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus..."  (Philippians 3:13-14)   Looking forward to where God is leading is the way intended for those of us who are walking the road with the Christ.  To look in any other direction is to risk losing our way.