The Ball Plant

Planting season is upon us and I am reminded of a humorous situation that occurred last year about this time. My husband  purchased a hanging cherry tomato plant.  It was covered with a multitude of small green fruit when he bought it.  He brought it home and sat it in the entrance way.  The next day our youngest grandson who was 3 at the time came for a visit.  As I was cooking, because there are ravenous young boys to feed in my home everyday; I noticed he had taken the only red tomato off the plant.  He was using it as a ball.  Of course before long he had squashed it and it was no longer fun.  I remember him being perplexed because balls do not normally ooze small seeds and red juice.  They of course are filled with air.  But, this being a tomato, it was a bit more fragile.  Try explaining that to a toddler who is convinced that you have stuck gold because you have acquired by some miraculous act a plant that actually grows balls.  Balls for the taking all day long, in two colors even.   This reminded me of how God, many times, is trying to tell us something and we, because of our mindset, just can’t seem to understand.  We are focused on the wrong thing or we can’t see the larger picture as God can.  In these times, we will just have to trust that God knows more than we do and act on that belief.  I knew that balls where not growing on our tomato plant but I could not convince a 3 year old of that.  He was drawing conclusions based on his own experiences and not what the truth really was.  Let’s be careful we don’t do the same where the Bible is concerned.  God’s Word is truth whether we believe it or not. We will just have to trust that God knows more than we do.