Many parents, when they begin to study divine educational principles, find it somewhat challenging to draw spiritual lessons from nature. When you cultivate the soil, as you work, these lessons almost flow naturally if you direct your thoughts to God. God desires to teach us, and when we are in the ideal situation and ask Him, He always answers. I have experienced this every time I work in the garden. More than just being there to give my daughters an opportunity to learn from nature, I am there for God to teach me as well. In the book Education, p. 79, we read:

“And for the older ones, who continually need this silent reminder of spiritual and eternal things, the lessons drawn from Nature will not be an inferior source of pleasure and instruction. As the inhabitants of Eden learned from the pages of Nature, as Moses discerned the traces of God's writing on the plains and mountains of Arabia, and the child Jesus on the hills of Nazareth, so may the children of today learn about Him. The invisible is illustrated by the visible. Upon all things on Earth, from the loftiest tree in the forest to the lichen clinging to the rock, from the boundless ocean to the most delicate shell on the shore, they may behold the image and inscription of God.”

We recently started a family garden project, and I remember that on the first day, we spent most of our time simply clearing the beds. We were working in a garden that had been cultivated before; the soil was prepared, but after winter, there were many dry weeds, old roots, and plant debris from previous crops. Our first task, then, was to clean the beds. As I began the work, my mind turned to the work we parents do with our children.

Before we can work in the garden bed of their hearts, we need to remove undesirable things from their lives. We need to pause and consider, "What sources (influences) have been feeding wrong thoughts into their minds?" Is it something coming from media, contact with friends who influence them for ill, or perhaps they have too much idle time, and the enemy has been tempting them toward evil?

When we decide to educate our children for good, all negative influences must be removed first. We cannot cultivate new seedlings in dirty soil; we must clean it first.

I also learned a second lesson after we cleared the beds. The soil was already well-loosened and ready for planting, but we noticed that even before we planted the seeds, the roots of weeds that had been dormant in winter had awakened and were already sprouting.

As I pulled them out, I noticed that some had very long and deep roots. One specific common type of weed I found had roots over half a meter long. I had to dig around and pull until I reached the very end of the root, because if I left even a small piece of it, it would sprout again. Once again, God brought spiritual lessons to my mind.

Many of us, as was my case, learned the principles of true education after our children had already reached a certain age. "Spiritually speaking," this means we didn't have the opportunity to prepare the garden soil of their hearts from the beginning. During those early years, many negative influences—"weeds"—were planted there without us realizing it, and now we have to deal with the consequences. How can we eliminate them? The only way to eliminate a weed is to dig deep and remove it completely, without leaving even a tiny piece of the root.

God brought to my mind an occasion when one of my daughters, around 4 years old, started exhibiting negative behavior. At mealtimes, she couldn't stay seated at the table. She would eat a little, then get out of her chair and start walking around the table. I would call her, and she'd come back, eat a bit more, then leave again, take a little stroll, and simply couldn't stay seated. I struggled with this behavior for several months. I talked to her, threatened her, but to no avail. One day, I even made a game out of it. I took a pretty ribbon and told her it was a gift, and that I would tie her to the chair so she couldn't leave until the end of the meal. She laughed and liked the idea, but soon enough, the ribbon didn't work anymore.

One day, very frustrated, I asked her, "Why do you keep getting out of your chair?" She looked at me, laughing, and said, "Because I'm Helen Keller." "What do you mean?" I asked, not understanding. She continued laughing, running around the table, and told me, "Remember the Helen Keller movie? She walks around the table." I immediately understood. At that time, we had a cartoon that told Helen Keller's story, and in one scene, young Helen was shown walking around the table, touching others' plates, because her parents didn't yet know how to educate her after her blindness, and she was literally growing up like an uncontrolled "weed."

That day, I had a conversation with my daughter, explaining that she wasn't Helen Keller, and also explaining that just as it was wrong for Helen to leave the table during meals, it was wrong for her too, and that just as Helen later learned to behave correctly, she also needed to learn. That was the end of the problem. Something as simple as asking why she was acting that way and explaining why she shouldn't, was enough to solve a problem we had been having for months.

This experience helped me understand the importance of always getting to the root of the problem when dealing with issues with our children. Certainly, the solution won't always be as simple as a question. Perhaps we'll need to talk with them, observe and remove influences, and we might even discover that the root of the problem came from our own poor example in the past.

Often, in the rush of daily life, we don't want to pause our responsibilities to solve certain problems. We apply a quick consequence and think that's enough. Sometimes the problem reappears, we apply the consequence once more, and in the end, it's never truly resolved. We don't take the time to dig deep and remove every tiny piece of the root of evil that might be there. The saying "haste is the enemy of perfection" fits very well when it comes to cultivating the garden of our children's hearts. We need to dedicate more effort to solving small problems before they become big ones.

We are often tempted to see negative behaviors or habits and think they will resolve themselves in the future, but the truth is that in the future, they will only grow larger, transforming into a bush or tree much harder to uproot. They might also spread and produce many other weeds, making the task much more difficult.

God, who is the Master Gardener of our hearts, teaches us countless lessons that will help us as parent-gardeners in cultivating the soil of our children's hearts. All we need to do is take the time to be in contact with the book that teaches us these lessons: nature.

Warmly, Rute Bazan

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