Pulled Back

In my garden yesterday I noticed that my cucumbers had finally grown enough to start reaching and climbing the trellis that I had provided for them. So I picked them up off the ground and positioned them on the lowest level of the trellis.

Today after some time in prayer, I went back out into my garden. The first row of cucumbers had grown upward, climbing the trellis. Yet the second row, under the shadow of the first who had already begun climbing, had left the position that I had put them in and began making their own way to the right toward the other row to climb the other rows trellis as it reached for the sun the fastest way it could tell how.

However, from my view point from above, as the husbandmen of the garden with greater vision and experience, out of care and understanding, after it had fought so hard through the night to get itself over to the right side, I pulled it back to where I had placed it before and again reconnected it to its own trellis.

I know that it might seem like it’s getting more light by going to the right for the moment, crawling along the ground. It might see those other plants climbing high, but if I leave it there, it will die. Cucumbers need to climb. They need to reach for something, left on the ground they will be stunted, overshadowed, get diseased and eventually die. I needed to pull it back and put it back into the right position to grow the fastest, so it could climb higher!

The plant was trying, doing what it thought best by it’s nature, but from my larger prospective I knew that it needed to do something contrary to it’s nature and it just needed to surrender to what I was doing for it. It was for it’s good. It was to help it grow faster! To reach the light and heights that it needed in order to become fruitful and productive the quickest!

It needed something to reach for and that something was in the opposite direction from where it thought it needed to go. My friend, sometimes to elevate faster you have to allow God to bring you back to where you were before you started trying to achieve your goals on your own.

Sometimes the fastest way to go forward is to go backwards. Reaching for the light was beneficial for the Cucumber for a short season while it was growing and developing the arms it needed to reach the wire, but once it had grown enough to start climbing, it needed to go back in order to go up.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.” – Proverbs 3:5-8