Last Fall Rory came home with two little paper bags of garlic, each holding two or three bulbs inside. We divided those bulbs into cloves and planted each one. This Summer I dug those cloves up and marveled at how they had miraculously grown into huge bulbs. We had dozens of beautiful bulbs drying on a card table out in the sun.
Then this Fall, Rory and Elsie spent an afternoon together dividing those very bulbs, planting rows and rows of garlic. There was plenty leftover for our own good eating and I’ve been mincing them into every pot of soup and stew ever since.
And now even though the ground is covered in snow, we know that next Spring those bulbs will shoot up beautiful curly scapes. We’ll enjoy those first. And in the summer we’ll dig the little planted cloves that miraculously multiplied into bulbs.
It is wondrous. Harvesting from a bountiful garden while remembering the tiny seeds that were sown is my annual reminder: God only operates in abundance. Multiplying every seed, generating new life, resurrecting what was dead.
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. – John 12:24
