The First Sunday in Lent
The Soil of Faithfulness
Reflections by Brian Cole
Do not begin by trying to grow asparagus. Care and tend for the soil where asparagus will flourish. The good asparagus will come.
- Brian Cole
Susan, my wife, is a gardener. For the first several years of our marriage, we lived on a large family property next door to her sister. Together, Susan and her sister tended a vegetable garden.
When we lived in such proximity to the garden, one my sister-in-law had cultivated for decades, I learned the significance of feeding the soil. If the soil is healthy, then the good growth is a kind of afterthought. The objective is not asparagus. Do not begin by trying to grow asparagus. Care and tend for the soil where asparagus will flourish. The good asparagus will come.
This is where time and preparation matter. You do not grow healthy fruits and vegetables overnight. Healthy food, good fruit, comes from a slow process. For a time, it will appear that nothing is happening. But in that nothing time, many things, unseen, are happening.
In St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is tempted by the devil in the wilderness. For forty days, in the wilderness, the devil tempts him. Forty days seems like a long time until you place it against the rest of Jesus’ life before the Spirit led him into the wilderness.
For all the time prior to the forty days in the wilderness, only good soil was growing in Jesus. The Scriptures were also good food. Jesus was fully one with the Spirit of God. Jesus was not preparing for the wilderness; Jesus was fully with God, the good and whole soil growing.
When the testing in the wilderness arrived, Jesus responded from the depth of a cultivated life. The testing gave witness to the complete depth of God’s Story and God’s Word fully in Jesus.
In cultivating a life of faithfulness, a life where good fruit grows in us, we are not called to be satisfied with appearances. I do not want simply to appear to be joyful, to have discovered a way to fake patience. I want those to be fruits growing from a deep soil in me.
Consider that your life is a garden, a place set apart for growth. The objective is not asparagus, but patience and joy and gentleness and self-control. If those fruits are to be real, they will take time.
You grow good fruit by cultivating the soil of your life. By trusting that you are worth the effort—to rise early to pray, to embrace your human limits, to seek a quiet place where nothing appears to be happening.
In the nothing season, when the fruit of the Spirit is quietly growing in you, God is preparing you to be a person of depth, grounded in the Real.
Listen To Our Lent Podcast Episodes
We also invite you to listen to the Living Compass Spirituality and Wellness Podcast hosted by Scott Stoner. This is a year-round, weekly podcast; however, during Lent, there will be two new episodes each week to enrich your experience of our Lenten readings on Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit.
You can listen to the podcast on our website by clicking HERE. You can also find this podcast in your favorite podcast listening app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)—just search for Living Compass Spirituality and Wellness