The Kingdom starts small, grows slow, but... wow!

Learning to raise strawberries was pretty horrible the first two years.

Following my favorite guide, The Joy of Gardening, I ordered five plants the first spring, and carefully set them out in well-prepared soil. So far, so good. But when my family looked at those five lonely plants, they mused, “That doesn’t look like it’s going to provide very many berries. What’s the point?” I was a little embarrassed, because inwardly I agreed. Over the next two months, I sweated under the hot Kansas sun, cultivating those five, puny plants, feeling like an idiot, and hoping my family wouldn’t notice how much work it was to care for five miserable plants that were never going to provide very many berries.

That’s when it became worse – much worse.

One of the plants died. Yet The Joy of Gardening insisted the next step was to pinch off the flowers to prevent the production of berries in the first season. So there I was, down to four plants, a whole summer’s worth of dirty, sweaty gardening, and not a single berry to show for it. Under my family’s gaze my embarrassment grew, and I regretted ordering strawberries at all.

When you pinch off the flowers, preventing the production of berries, the plant responds by sending out several (usually from 2 to 5) runners. Then, amazingly, 2 to 3 baby strawberry plants form on each runner. As I mulched the plants in the fall, just before the first frost, I counted 15 new runners, and some 40 baby plants.

Year two: Again I sweated under the hot Kansas sun. Sadly, in the peak of summer I dutifully pinched off the flowers from all the baby plants. Another of the original plants died. A rabbit discovered my garden and began eating some of my baby plants. Jeanne tried not to let me hear her laughing at me. How I hated those miserable strawberry plants!!

As I mulched the plants the second autumn, digging in a lot of added aged manure (you should have heard what my family said about that!!), I counted 3 old plants and 30 second-generation plants. From those plants came many new runners -- with countless new baby plants.

In year three we enjoyed our first strawberry shortcake – and in year four we were completely unable to count the harvest of big, fat, sweet, juicy, homegrown strawberries.

In the parable of the mustard plant, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is just like that. At first, there’s not much to show. It doesn’t look like much. It’s hot, sweaty, dirty work. We may hear others laughing at how ridiculous we look. Our spiritual journey is generally embarrassing and nasty work to begin with. But hang in there. Stay the course. Seek the Kingdom. Not at first, but sooner than we think, we begin to taste the Glory of the Lord in abundance beyond our imagination.

May the Peace of the Lord be with you!