“Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

—Matthew 13:32

Jesus was talking about a mustard seed. In another time or culture, he might have chosen tomato plants as his example. As Pastor Luke spoke about this parable last Sunday, my thoughts turned to what’s been happening in our back yard.

Lauren and I are rookie gardeners this summer. We considered it in the past, but our yard also contains rabbits, birds, the occasional deer and an estimated 4,700 chipmunks. So we always figured a garden would only serve as a 24/7 salad bar to all of these friends.

But this spring, for Lauren’s birthday, I got her a raised garden bed. The thinking was, our church was about to look closely at the agricultural stories Jesus told to help us understand his kingdom. So, what if we grew a few snap peas … lettuce … onions? Would we gain spiritual insights? Would we eat well? Would we find inner peace (or peas)?

 At the garden store, we bought seeds — but then we also came across tiny tomato plants in containers the size of a water glass.

“Hey, those could be good on salads,” we said to each other. The average American does eat nearly 20 pounds of tomatoes each year, but they’re mostly on pizza and in ketchup.

Two months after planting, the seed vegetables are doing so-so. The raised garden didn’t stop the chipmunks from eating the lettuce (more about them in a minute). The onions never grew past the size of grass blades. The peas turned mostly brown. But then we look at those glorious tomato plants. One of them—husky cherry tomato, to be exact—has grown to the size of a small city. Soon we may have enough cherry tomatoes to feed that city.

Our monster tomato plant doesn’t even elicit a raised eyebrow from serious gardeners. These are the current world records: A hydroponically grown cherry tomato plant in the United Kingdom reached 65 feet tall in 2000. Two years later, another British gardener, Douglas Smith, harvested 1,269 cherry tomatoes from a single truss (main stem). Those Brits are serious when it comes to something known as, and I’m not kidding here, the Competitive Vegetable Scene.

I am not completely unfamiliar. I used to work in daily newspapers, and every July and August became a freak show. Gardeners would bring in their humongous or weird-shaped vegetables, wanting their picture in the paper along with their mutant carrots, turnips, squash. (By the way, if you ever want to sleep peacefully again, do not google “weird-shaped vegetables”.)

Thankfully, all of our tomatoes are round thus far. Meantime, we have been catching chipmunks in one of those humane, box traps where you bait it with peanut butter. Then, you wait about four seconds for an unsuspecting rodent to sprint in there and for the door to snap shut. Your captive is now ready for relocation to a local, undisclosed woods. In the past three weeks, I have made 21 clandestine trips to this woods, now home to the chipmunk diaspora.

The spiritual lesson in all of this, you ask? I’m not even sure there is one, other than that tomato plant serving as a reminder: God can turn something small and insignificant into an enormous … um, blessing? And, as someone once said, if you want a vivid example of God’s ability to do more than we can ask or imagine, plant a garden.”

The practical value? With the balance of nature restored, our lettuce has grown back (but with tiny teeth marks still in the leaves). And the tomatoes continue to go berserk. This being our first gardening experience, we didn’t know enough to prune them. Which is a whole other sermon illustration.

And we’re eating a lot of salad, which will keep us healthier for next year’s Competitive Vegetable Scene.