Bean Sprouts

I finished planting my garden last week. The tomato plants are all in, along with a few pepper plants, zucchini and cucumber. I tried the pumpkin plants in a different spot and they are not doing so well. That’s how it goes; live and learn.

The carrots and lettuce are popping up out of the ground, but you have to get right down there to see them. The pea plants are going wild, as peas will do in the spring before the weather gets to warm. And my bean plants slowly, methodically are making their presence known.

I love it when the beans sprout out of the ground. The shell around their seed pod hangs onto the first leaves which unfold, eventually falling away as the plant grows. Sometimes that shell hangs on, not wanting to give up protecting its little plant. Even when the plant is a few inches tall, the shell might remain.

As a parent, sometimes I wish I could keep my protecting arms around my kids every minute of every day. Just because they are in their twenties doesn’t mean I don’t worry about them as much – maybe more – then I did when they were toddlers. But just like the bean plant, it looks pretty silly for me to be hanging onto them when they are taller than me and out on their own.

The bean plants will have to deal with the hot sun and cool nights, dry days and torrential rains. To some extent I can continue to protect my bean plants, at least watering them when it doesn’t rain, but don’t expect me to be out there covering them in the event of an early summer frost. They are on their own then. Our children, on the other hand, are protected in all weather, from droughts to floods, from frost to heat wave. No matter what the elements bombard them with, they are covered by the love of their heavenly Father.

The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. (Isaiah 58:11, New King James Version)