Description
In the spring we go into our gardens filled with hope. We lay out our plots of ground and decide just what we wish nature to produce for us during the summer. And we wait with enthusiastic interest upon a miraculous and wonder-working law for the first evidence that our seed of hope has been accepted and that we may confidently look forward to a harvest.
And now, just before we begin planting our gardens, let’s consider one of the parables of Jesus, the parable of the sower, in which he tells us that a certain man went forth to sow seeds. Some of the seed fell on barren soil and some on good, while some fell on rocks and some were carried away by the wind. He tells us that the seed that fell into good soil increased a hundredfold.
Jesus, wisest of the wise, brought us these simple nature lessons to show that just as there is a law of creation working in the most common garden plot, so there is another and a similar law of This Thing Called Life working in the garden of our minds. For when his disciples asked him to interpret the meaning of this parable, he said that the seed is the word, by which he meant our thoughts and feelings, our mental attitudes toward life. And Jesus told us that these words, these seed-thoughts, which we sow in the garden of the mind, should be thoughts of faith, of love, of hope, and over and over again he tells us that they must be thoughts of acceptance.
We are so accustomed to planting something in the earth and having it grow that we accept this miracle of nature as an ordinary event. We layout our rows and plant our seeds with a happy and an enthusiastic expectancy. We are as childlike about this as is a little tot who asks his mother for supper.
A good gardener takes joy in what he is doing and is happy over the prospect. And yet, how completely the best gardener must rely on the laws of nature, for he knows that no seed can take root until it is planted, and that there can be no harvest until the seed is first hid away in the creative law of nature.
Now this is just as much an act faith as though you were praying for something. But the faith you have in planting your garden is complete, it is relaxed. You do not question as to whether or not life will give you a harvest. Experience has taught you that it will. And don’t you think this same truth holds good in the law of mind and Spirit?
Jesus said that we should watch and pray when we prepare the soil of the mind in order that the warmth of God’s sunshine and the refreshment of His gentle rain may penetrate the soil of our mind and turn it into a rich brown loam of love. In mental gardening thought is the seed which through the law of love can heal, enrich, and expand your experience. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” And as he continually thinks, deep in his inward conviction, so will he become.