God causes the growth
Our efforts are half the battle
The other night, as I was doing some reading for my scripture class, I found myself stopped by this verse from St. Paul: “Therefore neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7).
I sat with this for a few days. For a self-proclaimed non-gardener —I’m not really a fan— I’ve noticed how the Lord really drives His point home for me with gardening metaphors. The idea of this sank into my heart in three movements: first with wonderment, followed by heavy annoyance, and then a sobering humility.
First, the wonderment. When I was still in the convent, one of the greatest areas where I was challenged and stretched was gardening. To be clear, I don’t mind being outside and being with nature. The part I found most problematic was being too much with nature — having the soil get up in my business and I in the plants’ business. Maybe this says more about me and my relationship to manual labour. Maybe I’m spoiled and lazy in this regard. But all around, if given a choice, I’d rather look at the garden rather than be a part of cultivating it.
All that said, I grew a relationship with the vegetables and the flowers we were growing. I would get up early each morning and water the plants all around the property. Some mornings, if the weather was particularly good, I’d get a beautiful view of the sunrise coming up on Route 66. In an instant, the world would go from dimly lit to fully glowing in the sun. It was remarkable, and for all the internal (and sometimes external) complaining I did, this part of the experience was something that I would never forget.
This work that was put in to caring for the plants — first the planting, and then the consistent watering, nurturing, and pruning — was all hard work. But this is the mystery of planting more broadly. Like my formator, you can plan as meticulously as you want — planting certain plants next to others, using a certain row pattern and watering schedule, the whole nine yards. The conditions of the soil and the weather might even be as perfect as can be. But ultimately, it is God who causes the growth.
We don’t see what happens beneath the surface. We can set up the best case scenarios to give plants the best chance to grow. Whether or not the harvest is plentiful is left to the mystery of God.
This leads me to that second emotion: heavy annoyance. I say heavy because it really felt like this immovable weight on my shoulders. What does this say about the efforts we put into life — putting in the hard work at our jobs, doing all we can to stay healthy, or putting ourselves out there to meet new people?
“Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything.” We can clock in many faithful hours and still get passed over for a promotion. We can eat right, workout often, and sleep well and still get seriously ill. We can make a conscious effort to go out, meet new people and try new things and still get no dates.
This is me being whiny and having an all or nothing mentality with the Lord, but in my reflection, things felt futile. It felt like it wasn’t just the effort that was nothing. Part of me felt like I was nothing.
I can plant and water, faithfully and diligently. But nothing is owed to me by the Lord: No promotion, no good health, no money, no power, no husband, no family.
Yet, while nothing is owed, many things are entrusted: my work, my health, my temporal goods, my current vocation and wherever the Lord chooses to direct me.
Paul goes on to say after verse 7: “The one who plants and the one who waters are equal, and each will receive wages in proportion to his labour. For we are God’s coworkers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” (v. 8-9).
Maybe this looks crazy in the eyes of the world. Common sense tells me that if there are no guaranteed results or positive outcomes, why do something at all?
But the Lord invites me to look deeper and see my relationship with Him as not only Father and daughter, but also co-worker in the vineyard. I am God’s field. If I remain infertile out of spite, fear and negligence, nothing can grow. There is no chance for fruit. As He reminded me recently, “My outcomes are not your outcomes.”
Which leads me to the third emotion: sobering humility. There’s an adage that God continues to remind you of things that you still have yet to learn. Since I get this reminder at least once a quarter, I take this as a sign that I still need to grow in humility.
The reality is that all the efforts that go into anything are just half the battle. Obviously, if you want homegrown tomatoes, you’re going to have to grow them! Maybe more to the point, anything that is worth doing requires effort, time and vulnerability.
But perhaps the deeper part, the scarier part, is the fact that some outcomes can’t be guaranteed, especially when it comes to tending to the bigger parts of our life like our life’s work, relationships, and existence, period.
I know that I wasn’t made to live in fear, and I know that there is so much more to my life than what I see in front of me. One of the things I’ve been marvelling at recently is how a series of yeses and decision points have gotten me to where I am now. Maybe somewhere along the way I made a few mistakes and God had to re-route me. But isn’t it so special that even in mistakes, nothing can disrupt what the Lord has meant for me.
God causes the growth — and man, has He caused a lot of growth in my life.
The opportunity to be a co-worker with Him in the particular settings and relationships He has given to me is a humbling and sobering thing: How He specifically chose me to do the things that I’m doing. And He does that with each of us.
Further in 1 Corinthians, one of my favourite passages in the entire bible is that of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). It is a good reminder to all of us that our lives are non-transferable. We can imitate others down to the most minute detail, but ultimately we can never be that person. We can only be ourselves.
When we really lean into the full spectrum of what God has given us — physical and spiritual gifts, life circumstances, and personal history — and we co-labour with God in that, we can start to see more clearly where He wants us to minister. That, coupled with the love and providence of God, can lead to not only growth for ourselves, but a growth that ripples out far beyond our immediate sphere of influence.
So let us plant, cultivate, and water faithfully. God is the one in charge of the growth.
In Jesus,
Rachel