The Weight of the Wheelbarrow

In 2019, a community garden in East Nashville nearly shut down. The soil was contaminated, the fence was broken, and most of the original volunteers had drifted away. But a retired schoolteacher named Dorothy Clemmons refused to let it die. Every Saturday morning, she showed up with her wheelbarrow, hauling fresh topsoil one load at a time.

Nobody helped at first. Neighbors watched from their porches. A few shook their heads. But Dorothy kept showing up. She did not lecture anyone. She just pushed that wheelbarrow.

By the third week, a young father named Marcus carried over a bag of compost. The next Saturday, two teenagers from the apartment complex pulled weeds without being asked. By midsummer, fourteen families were tending plots, sharing tomatoes over the fence, and watching out for each other's children.

Dorothy did not reap what she sowed overnight. There were weeks when the wheelbarrow felt impossibly heavy and the garden looked hopeless. But she understood something Paul wrote to the Galatians — that the person who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life, and that we must not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.

The burden you carry for someone else today is a seed. The kindness no one notices is a seed. Keep pushing the wheelbarrow. The harvest belongs to God.