All That Work!

Our family has been anticipating the harvesting of our beloved peas this summer. We planted the seeds with the utmost care very early in the spring because we couldn't wait to have fresh peas from our garden. We watered those pea plants whether they needed it or not (Thanks, boys!). They were checked daily after the first few leaves popped out of the ground. They were even weeded around almost every day!

Then the excitement died off. There was no reward for all the work, so the boys quit checking the plants on a daily basis to see if there were any peas yet.... until today!

Today we decided that the pea pods were big enough and we were going to have a feast tonight on our fresh peas! Well, we picked every pea pod that we could find, took them into the house and Stephen and I started shelling them. When our tiny little basket was emptied of pea pods, we took a closer look at our prized bowl of peas.

WHAT?! All that work all summer long for this?! I think we have a total of about 80 little peas or half a cup. That's it! All that work amounted to enough for one serving that was supposed to provide the whole family with our fresh produce enjoyment for supper, and hopefully with some left over for Christohper's lunch tomorrow! Needless to say, we are quite disappointed with our meager handful of peas that we have harvested! Stephen's only comment to me was, "That's all?!" Thankfully our rows of beans had a much higher volume of produce so we picked those plants clean and had a wonderful little bowl of green beans for supper.

I guess the Apostle Paul was correct in his analogy that he planted, Apollos watered but God gave the increase. We did all we knew how to plant and grow our precious peas. We planted. We watered. We weeded. We observed. We also poked and prodded. We accidentally pulled some plants out in our excitement. (I'm using the plural form here so that I don't incriminate any one person. :) Even after all we had done, God was the One to determine the increase and this time He chose to give us beans instead of peas.

No problem. The beans were graciously consumed and we'll try the peas again next year anyway. :)