Your Farm and Garden by Joel C. Rogers

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 29, 1902

Your Farm and Garden

By Joel C. Rogers

We call the spot of ground marked off by the surveyor's chain and inclosed by a fence, “my farm,” or “my land.” But God says of all the farms occupied by his people, “The land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” Have you ever thought that you deal with only a foot of the surface soil? Suppose the Lord should remove his holding power, and let the bottom drop from your farm? It would be of little value to you then. “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine.”

But even in this foot of soil that you call yours, see what God is doing for you! The snow has been coming down and the rain “from heaven,” to water the earth and make it “growing and fruitful.” Isa. 55:10, German. There comes a rainfall of one inch in April or May, when your soil has a temperature of 40°. The temperature of the rain is about 60°. On every acre of your farm there falls in small drops over thirteen tons of water. These warming drops percolate quickly into the soil, pushing the colder soil water down, and raising the temperature at least ten degrees in the first three inches of common clay loam.

The germination of seed and the vital processes of plant life cannot begin until the soil is warmed to a temperature of 45°. So in this soil factory of God's, he sets to work for your benefit myriads of food-producing workmen, just by sending one warm spring rain.

And with the return of springtime the sun rises higher into the heavens, so that his powerful beams may do their needed work upon your soil. Mighty workmen are these rays of sunshine! and how is it? Notice, next time you take your sledge hammer to break a stone, that all the force you put into each blow is given up by the hammer, crushing the rock before it, and allowing the hammer to come to rest at your feet. If not enough force is received by the stone to break it, the hammer rebounds, using some force to send it back. Just so the sunshine contains force from God in the form of heat. In spring and summer, as the sun stands more directly over your farm, his blows of heat-making force become more rapid, imparting some of their force to warm and dry your ground; while some rebounds into the air to warm it, forming a blanket which holds the warmth already gained by the soil.

Of this work of the sun it is said: ‘Four hundred millions of them [heat waves] arrive at each leaf every second. . . . It is under such hurried strokes as these that starch and sugar are made in the cells of plants.’—The Soil, Prof. F. H. King. It is also said that the working power of the sun at the earth's surface is equal to almost four-horse-power for each square yard. Thus God works to “give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater;” that is, to yourself.

How many men would need to be set to work with waterpots to carry water from the sea and lake to warm up your soil, as one shower of rain does? These showers are sent or withheld by the Lord. When he is obeyed, and idols are put away, “then shall he give the rain of thy seed.” “Then I will give you rain in due season.” See Isa. 30:23; Lev. 26:4.

Suppose the warmth from the sun were withheld after the ground is frozen: how many fires would you have to build to thaw it out? Or how many men with their sledge hammers would be needed to impart the necessary heat by the friction of their blows? We can do the tilling and planting, with the strength given us from our God. But how puny is all our work when placed beside the mighty work he is doing every day upon the earth!

How perfectly reasonable it is, then, that you should recognize the Lord's share in the products from your farm and garden! If a neighbor works your field on shares, furnishing certain things, and doing work equal in value to what you furnish, he gets half of the products. You would not think of ignoring him in time of harvest, taking the whole for yourself. Or if you work his land on shares, and he takes the whole harvest, he might expect soon to hear unfavorably from you.

Has God been working continually for you in your soil these many years, and you have been treating him as an uninterested party, taking to yourself practically all the harvests, both his share and yours? How would it do to take the Lord into your confidence and deal with him on the share plan for a while? Seeing that you thus recognize him as a worker with you, and regard yourself as a worker together with him, he can safely do more than ever for you in your soil and seed. Then you may expect that this saying shall come to pass: “Blessed shall be . . . the fruit of thy ground, . . . blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. . . . The Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, . . . and in the fruit of thy ground. . . . The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand.” Deuteronomy 28. Take the Lord in on shares this year.

JOEL C. ROGERS.