Multiplied in the Unseen

By Josh Singleton | Founder, The Neighborhood Garden Project

The garden doesn’t start with noise. It starts quiet. It doesn’t try to impress anyone. It just shows up and does what it was made to do. You might walk by and not even notice anything happening. But that doesn’t mean growth isn’t taking place.

Take potatoes, for example. You won’t see much going on for a long time. No fruit. No big leaves. Nothing flashy. Just dirt. But under that dirt, something’s happening. It’s slow. It’s steady. And it’s completely hidden. We water. We wait. We hope. But until we gently dig into the soil, we don’t know for sure what’s there. Then one day, we pull back the earth—and there they are. Potatoes. Dozens of them. Not because we forced anything. Just because we stayed faithful.

That’s the Kingdom. God grows things in secret first. And when the time is right, He brings them into the light. Not so we can show off—but so others can be fed. Not for praise—but for purpose.

That’s how we built The Neighborhood Garden Project. We don’t chase results. We focus on roots. We take our time. We let people grow at their own pace. We hold the soil. We protect the space. And we don’t dig things up too early just to check if it’s working. We trust that it is.

When the time comes, what grows is more than just food—it’s faith. It’s the proof that God is doing something, even when we can’t see it. Those potatoes aren’t just crops. They’re reminders. That slow matters. That hidden things are holy. That the real work happens underground.

So we stay faithful in the dirt. Because the Kingdom grows there. Quiet. Steady. Real.

It’s hard sometimes, seeing how the world measures everything by what can be seen. What’s fast. What’s loud. What looks like success. But the Kingdom doesn’t work that way. God does His best work underground, in the quiet, in the waiting. The harvest may get the attention, but the miracle is what happened before anything showed up. Nobody counts the stillness. Or the silence. Or the days you show up wondering if anything’s working. But that’s where the real change happens. That’s where people start to become.

The potatoes in my hand? They’re not the goal. They’re just the evidence. Evidence that something real was happening long before we could see it. That’s why it’s easy to give the food away. Because this was never just about food. What I’ve found here is something deeper—something I didn’t fully understand until I slowed down long enough to let the soil teach me.

The Garden has shown me things about God I never saw clearly before. It’s taught me to pay attention. To protect space. To let people grow without being rushed. And when they do, it’s not flashy—but it’s real. That’s why we don’t measure like the world does. We hold space for the slow work. For the quiet kind of growth that sticks.

Gardening isn’t a guessing game. It’s a relationship. Sure, some things are out of our hands—weather, pests, crop failures. But with time, you start to notice the patterns. You learn what a seed needs. You know when to plant, how deep, how long to wait. You stop trying to control it, and you just learn how to show up right.

I’ve learned this: the potato doesn’t need to be anything else. It doesn’t try to perform. It doesn’t shift to please anyone. It just is. And that’s the point. My job isn’t to change it. My job is to care for the soil and give it what it needs. Time. Space. Cover. Patience. And when I do, it always gives back more than I put in.

That’s how the Kingdom works too. Not performance. Not pressure. Just partnership. God already wrote the purpose into the seed. My role is to trust the process and stay faithful with what I’ve been given.

The same thing goes for discipleship, for leadership, for parenting. These aren’t random experiments. They’re slow, steady processes that take time. And if you’ve walked with the soil, you know: the more trust, the more fruit.

That’s why we’re careful about who we let near the soil. Not because we’re exclusive—but because we’re serious about what’s growing here. In the nonprofit world, there’s a lot of pressure to prove something fast. To show numbers. To tell stories before they’re ready. But we don’t chase that. We don’t try to sell people a vision. We invite them to see what’s already growing.

We don’t need someone to come in and fix the vision. We need people who can see the treasure already planted and help protect it. Our job isn’t to convince. It’s to stay aligned.

Jesus once told a parable about a man who found treasure buried in a field. He sold everything just to buy the field. Not because it looked valuable, but because he knew what was buried in it. That’s what we’re doing. We’re giving our lives to something that might look ordinary to the world—but we know what’s underneath.

This vision we carry? It’s clear. It’s steady. It draws the right people at the right time. And it draws provision too. Not because we shout loud—but because we stay faithful.

But clarity gets tested. Especially when others ask for visible proof before the fruit’s ready. That’s when I remember the potato. It doesn’t panic. It doesn’t rush. It trusts the process. And because of that, it multiplies—quietly, generously, in its own time.

That’s the posture we want to hold. We’re not led by results. We’re led by the One who made the soil. So we stay rooted in that.

People pass by the garden every day. Some slow down. Some don’t. We don’t chase anyone. We don’t beg for attention. We just stay ready. Because when someone’s heart is stirred and they step onto this soil, they’re not entering a program. They’re stepping into something God’s already been doing.

This is how we see people too. We’re not trying to change who they are. We’re here to help them grow into it. To honor what God already planted in them. That means being present, being steady, and trusting what we can’t control.

The Neighborhood Garden Project isn’t built on pressure. It’s built on presence. It’s built on protecting the slow and sacred work of becoming. We’re not afraid of slow. We welcome it. Because we’ve learned that in due time, if we don’t quit, the harvest comes.

And when it does? It feeds more than we ever expected. Not just bellies. But souls. Because it came from trust, not striving. Just like the potato—we weren’t made to perform. We were made to multiply.