Faith, Doubt and Tomatoes

My tomatoes got a slow start this year. The late freeze in May shocked them a bit. In midsummer when they're usually starting to set fruit, there wasn't much going on. I was worried that either they wouldn't set fruit, or it would be so late that they wouldn't get ripe.

Here's what I didn't do. I didn't march out to the garden in the middle of July and rip out all my tomato plants. That would have been stupid. I waited it out, had faith in good soil and sunshine, and stuck it out. And I have tomatoes. My counter is covered in beautiful juicy orbs of red, yellow, and orange. They are beautiful and bountiful, more than I can eat.

I'm not a good spiritual gardener sometimes. In my backyard, I plant seeds, I work for them, tend them, and patiently wait for them to bloom and bear fruit. Some things work great, other things not so much, but every year I thoroughly enjoy my garden. In my life, I plant seeds, I work for them, I tend them, and when things don't go exactly as I hoped, I let doubt creep in and start pulling up the plants. I need to stop doing that.

Faith and hope are the key, I think, to breaking that bad habit. One setback, a metaphorical late-May freeze, doesn't ruin everything, yet I don't give things a chance to recover. This is my latest revelation of personal weaknesses (they're really starting to add up...). I hope, I sincerely hope, that Christ's atonement can help me fix this one. That somehow, he has some kind of spiritual greenhouse where he's been tending to my abandoned "plants" while I figured this stuff out. Or maybe it's like the seasons, and if I'm patient and plant more seeds, I'll get another go-round at the things that I've impetuously cast into the compost heap in my frustration and despair. Maybe spring will come around again.

Alma had something to say about that in the Book of Mormon. This is what I hope for. This is what I desire to believe:

"But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.
And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.
Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you."