Busy Little Suckers

Have y’all ever raised tomatoes?

That is THE garden plant of the south, I think.  But raising them is more complicated than you might imagine. Practically every southerner has their own way of planting, tending, fertilizing, and raising their ‘maters. USUALLY, that system has a LOT to do with how their Mama and Daddy, or Granny and Granddaddy did it. It’s a generational thing. (Y’all know we love our traditions down here.)

In my family, we like the tall spindly tomato plants.  Whether we are starting from seed or picking them up from the local guy selling them out of the bed of his pick-up, we look for the long lanky ones.  My Daddy always used a post hole digger to dig the holes and he would dig them DEEP.

My job, as a little barefoot kid, was to go behind Daddy and throw a handful of fertilize in the hole (not too much, or it would burn them.)  Then Mama would come behind me and pitch a little dirt on top of the fertilize, and plant the tomato.  The leaves need to be removed all the way up to the top (don’t take them all, you should have a little wad of leaves remaining on the end.) Then you bury it deep.  Daddy would tell me to bury it, “All the way up to it’s neck,” and fill the hole in with dirt.  When you have finished, there is only a tiny little leafy part sticking out of the dirt, and anybody that didn’t know better would think you had bought some itty bitty little ‘maters.  But here is the secret: Tomatoes will root all up and down their stems!  So what you are doing is giving them a nice deep root system that will help prevent them from being affected by summer dry spells.  You are laying a foundation for some great nourishment for your plant, by giving them LOTS of roots and many ways to get the sustenance they need from all different directions. You are helping them to get established.

When we started growing our own tomatoes, we OF COURSE planted them like Mama and Daddy did, and we ended up with some plants that were growing like gangbusters.  But that’s not the end of the story.

If you want the really nice fruit, the BIG fruit (what good is a sandwich without a monster garden tomato sliced on it?) then you have to pinch off the suckers.  For you non-tomato folks, a sucker is a little smallish (at least at first) shoot that grows out of the joint of the tomato stalk and a branch.  And they are called “suckers” because they SUCK the energy right out of your tomato.  These little shoots aren’t BAD per se.  In fact, you can grow tomatoes and not pinch the suckers off, and you will have some beautiful leafy plants.  But your plant is putting all it’s energy into these little shoots and not as much into the fruit.  The result is that your fruit, while still good fruit, ends up smaller.  If you want the big, giant slicing tomatoes, you have to keep the suckers pinched off.

So why am I talking about tomatoes?

Well, as Christians we can be like a tomato plant.  The Lord establishes us. We study the Word, listen to pastors, teachers, prophets and evangelists, and develop a deep root system — one that serves us well and is even equipped to see us through the dry spells. Our plant has a nice sturdy stalk and we are putting on leaves and branches like nobody’s business.  We are GROWING, man!  It’s exciting!!  Then we start to get these little suckers.  These are the “extra” activities in our life.  They are small at first and don’t make much difference.  But then they get bigger and leafier and demand more of our time and focus.  We think, “I’ll just leave that little shoot.  It’s healthy, and it’s got lots of leaves, and it looks pretty.” But before you know it you have a LOT of those little suckers, and they are growing and growing.  They start zapping energy. And even though these things, these suckers, are good, we don’t realize that we are getting caught up in the business of BUSYNESS, and it’s draining our strength.  We have signed up for this little thing or that little group or activity and even though none of them are BAD things (they may even be VERY worthy causes) they take our focus away from what is truly important: FRUIT.  Particularly the fruit we are called, even created, to bear.

Now don’t misunderstand, I am NOT saying that you shouldn’t be helping out at church, or in your family, or the community.  People have giftings and callings and the body of Christ needs all these different things to come together and make the whole.

But I AM saying that we should evaluate and pray about where we invest our time and energy.  Busyness does NOT equal HOLINESS.  Sometimes we think that being involved in so many different things, to the point of exhaustion, somehow translates into a sign of prestige or godliness.

The Word says in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  It’s not just OKAY to rest.  We are COMMANDED to rest.

It’s not that God doesn’t expect us to work, and to work hard.  He DOES.  Proverbs in particular is full of verses about slothfulness and how God blesses us through the works of our hands.  But we must keep in mind what is important, be balanced, focused, and renew ourselves.  We need to learn to edit things out of our lives. We need to make time to rest so that the fruit that we bear is the beautiful, full-sized, ripened fruit that He INTENDED for us, and not the small, sad, little trial-sized cherry tomato that is all we had time and oomph to make.

God says that we are known by our fruit.

Have you pinched off the suckers?

What does your fruit look like?

 

Psalm 127:2    It is in vain that you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.

 

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