A Tomato Plant in the Cracks

A couple weeks ago, Laree and I drove down for a morning respite walk in the middle of the covid lockdown, and as we parked and made our way to the sidewalk my eye caught an odd looking weed in the street.  It turned out to be a tomato plant that had wedged itself between the pavement and the street asphalt.  This also happened to be the same weekend the riots broke out downtown after George Floyd was killed.  The world is a mess right now. 

I suppose that the analogy that should have come to mind is the parable of the sower, where some of the seed fell on stony ground and struggled to grow because it had no depth of soil.  But that’s not where my mind went because the tomato plant actually looked pretty healthy growing there against the odds in the crack between the pavement and the curb.

What I really thought about was how sometimes life just doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.  Like when there’s a pandemic and when the country is erupting in violence because the systemic racism and classism that flows like an aquifer through our culture and where our leaders act like contestants on bad reality TV.  Like when the circumstances of my own life don’t seem to fit any of the predefined categories that I’ve et up for myself and I find myself wondering what’s the purpose of it all?  Seriously, why was there a tomato plant growing in the crack between the pavement and the curb along a busy road anyway?  That really doesn’t make any sense at all.  But there it was.  

I looked, like Alice, into this fuzzy green looking glass and I felt like its questions were somehow my questions.  Am I a seed that happened to fall in a crack, sprouting up for a little while until the other shoe drops?  A seedling accident doomed to get squashed by the universe’s valet?   I wonder how it even lived this long?

I sometimes feel like life is fluid, like waves on the beach.  Other times it seems to harden around me on all sides like lava circumstances into concrete and asphalt realities, irreconcilable, leaving us vulnerable, exposed and lonely tomato plants.

There’s a community garden about a mile’s walk away with raised beds and rich soil and built in PVC water pipes that water the plants automatically.  That’s where all the cool tomato plants hang out, the tall pretty ones, the heirloom varieties, along with a bunch of really pretty flowers and vegetables.  It’s right down the street from a beautiful church.  It’s well tended & an easy place to be a tomato plant, what with cross pollination and all.  And I thought about how God designed us for community, but that sometimes it feels like all the community is happening a mile down the street in that community garden & we’re missing out on it.

I thought about the fact that this little plant was made to bear fruit.  I think most people know that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.  And I wondered if it was possible for this one to actually produce tomatoes or if it was going to die.  There it was hanging in the balance, designed for a purpose but placed in circumstances not conducive to it.  The essence of the tomato plant is the same whether it’s growing in a crack in the pavement or if it’s growing in the fertile loam of a raised bed.  Some people have it good, some are dealt an empty hand.

I also thought about living as a Christian in our culture and how we’re surrounded by temptation on every side and how we may be diligent and on guard about some of those temptations, but other ones are pretty sneaky.  Things like the idolatry of comfort and success and productivity and experience.  Poet Ann Porter captures this in her poem, After Psalm 137.  Remember that one?  That’s the psalm where the people of Israel sat by the water in Babylon and wept for Zion while their songs were ridiculed.  Then Jeremiah came along and said to go ahead and build houses, make gardens and have families and seek the welfare of the city.  But he also warned them not to to get too comfortable there because false prophets and dreamers would come along and try to deceive them.

After Psalm 137

We’re still in Babylon but
We do not weep
Why should we weep?
We have forgotten
How to weep

We’ve sold our harps
And bought ourselves machines
That do our singing for us
As who remembers now
The songs we sang in Zion?

We have got used to exile
We hardly notice
Our captivity
For some of us
There are such comforts here
Such luxuries

Even a guard
To keep the beggars
From annoying us

Jerusalem
We have forgotten you

While I was thinking all these thoughts, the Lord reminded me of the words of Isaiah.  He had a lot to say to the Israelites about Babylon.  The words the Lord brought to my mind are ones we usually think about them at Christmas time, but are also pretty applicable to hopeless time and confusion time.  They’re words of comfort to a people who have been lied to by their leaders, led astray by their own hearts and finally exiled to Babylon, and I’m guessing, because I wasn’t actually there, that life seems pretty pointless and hopeless.  I’d be thinking that for sure.

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together.
Isaiah 40:4-5

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them;
I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the midst of the valleys.
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
and the dry land springs of water.
Isaiah 41:17-18

a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
Isaiah 42:3

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
Isaiah 43:1-3

I think Rich Mullins was on to something when he sang these lines in his song Land of my Sojourn:

“Nobody tells you when you get born here,
how much you’ll come to love it
and how you’ll never belong here.
So I call you my country
And I’ll be lonely for my home
and I wish that I could take you there with me.”

This crack will never fit the tomato plant and this world will never fit us like a comfortable pair of old jeans.  If it does, then we should know something’s not right.  When I was younger a lot of my Christian experience was all about trying to figure God out and fit him in my conveniently sized boxes marked “Fragile: God.”  But now that I’m old, the more I realize that I haven’t gotten things figured out at all and the world around me doesn’t make a lot of sense and that we’re a lot more fragile than God is.  

And so I’m really thankful that God tells faintly burning wicks, bruised reeds and vulnerable tomato plants not to fear and that he’s with us and that we have a heavenly country that’s waiting for us if we’ll just follow him there.