One of the hardest parts of growing tomatoes is pruning them. Several times a week, we examine our plants for suckers - branches growing where they shouldn't be - and remove them. In themselves, suckers aren't a bad thing, and sometimes it's a hard decision to remove them, because they've been allowed to grow for a while, they look healthy, and they may even have some fruit on them. However, they make the rest of the plant weaker, and take vital energy from the main branches and the larger fruits growing on them.
The first couple years we grew tomatoes, things went very smoothly. Our plants produced huge quantities of large, ripe fruits, with no effort beyond watering, weeding, and pruning. But then several years ago we had a blight which ravaged the entire region. Everyone seemed to be struggling. No matter how carefully you attended to your tomatoes, the fruits would rot right on the vine. Every harvested tomato was a victory.
Ever since the blight, we've noticed that it's harder each season to get our plants to produce the large, beautiful fruits that we'd like to see. Oh, they're fruitful, but the tomatoes are small and seedy, and not terribly robust.
We've tried adding mushroom soil, we've tried adding lime, we've tried spritzing the leaves with Epsom salts. But nothing has been able to improve the production of our fruit.
Today at the garden store, I found an organic fertilizer specifically for growing tomatoes. I quickly scanned through the list of ingredients: potash, crushed oyster shells, chicken poop.... I was so excited about the prospect of a fertilizer that would address all the potential issues affecting the tomatoes that I didn't give much thought to the last ingredient. Chicken poop.
Once at the garden, I figured out the spacing for my plants, grabbed my spade, and dug the first hole. Then I opened the bag of fertilizer. And all I could smell was.... chicken poop. My eyes watered. I found myself gagging. I repented of ever having coveted my neighbor's chickens. I cried out, "Oh, Lord, save this poor old city girl and her tender nose from the smell of chicken poop!" Into each hole, I measured three scoops of this fertilizer. Halfway through my task I almost gave it up, closed up the bag, and planted the rest without the fertilizer. But I kept thinking about the nice, big tomatoes I'd like to harvest, so I kept scooping, and gagging, and repenting.
After the last plant was firmly in the ground, fertilized and watered, I heard the Lord reminding me of this verse: "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation." (Romans 5:3-4, NLT)
The Christian walk requires many things to help us to grow in faith and a right relationship with God. Most of them are disciplines and practices, like fellowship with other believers, meditation on the Word, and prayer. But an untested faith will never be as strong as one that has had to stand up under terrible circumstances, so God allows us to be challenged in order to make us strong. He allows us to be challenged so that we can see His strength when we're at the end of ours. He allows us to be challenged so that we can experience His faithfulness, even when things seem hopeless. James puts it this way: "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." (James 1:2-4, NLT)
We will all have problems and trials. And they really stink. I mean, they stink like chicken poop. Sometimes our problems and trials make our eyes water, and they're practically unbearable, and we want to just close up the Bible and stop trying so hard and go back to just doing the bare minimum in our walk with the Lord. But it's at that point that we need to remember the fruit that we're hoping for, and repent of the things holding us back, and cry out to God for the strength to keep going. Because sometimes, in order to really grow, we need just a little bit of... chicken poop.
