Covered with Purpose

Why We Stop, Why We Wait, and What Happens When We Align with Heaven

By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

At first glance, it looks like nothing is growing. Just beds—covered and quiet. To the passerby, they might seem unfinished or overlooked, forgotten spaces in a garden otherwise full of life. But the Kingdom sees differently. These are not forgotten beds. They are set apart. Covered not to conceal failure, but to protect purpose. This is a holy pause. A deliberate withholding. A sacred seal over what is not yet ready to be revealed.

Underneath these tarps, the soil is healing. Rebalancing. Softening. And this isn’t poetic language—it’s biological truth. When soil is covered, microbial life has a chance to multiply without disruption. Fungi re-establish their networks. Bacterial communities diversify. Earthworms return and begin aerating from below. Carbon is retained. Moisture stabilizes. Weed seed banks are slowly starved of light, reducing future labor. This isn’t idleness—it’s orchestration. Research confirms that tarping for rest (a method known as occultation) can increase microbial biomass and nutrient cycling while simultaneously suppressing unwanted growth. In other words, rest produces readiness. But that readiness can’t be rushed. Because soil is not static—it’s alive. And all living systems require seasons of recovery to avoid collapse.

Preparation is never wasted in the Kingdom. Because fruit is never the starting point—formation is. It is always the result of deep, sometimes unseen formation. The seed must break. The soil must rest. The roots must stretch in silence before anything can rise in season. This is the pattern of Heaven: formation first, fruit in time. The world rushes to display. But the Kingdom insists on depth.

But these covered beds also reflect something deeper: the courage to say no to hurry and yes to holiness. We’ve learned something over time, something hard and humbling—most people do not want to be formed. They want access without alignment. A harvest without sowing. Everything for nothing. And culture affirms this pattern by saying, “Everyone is on their own journey.” That’s true—but not every journey is aligned with this garden.

We honor that God works uniquely in each person’s life, but we also recognize that not every journey is ready for this soil. There are other gardens—many of them—that will affirm the pace of personal preference, that will offer comfort without transformation, that will allow the garden to become a coping mechanism, a place to escape rather than engage. But we are not that kind of garden.

This soil doesn’t exist to entertain unformed stories or host detours of avoidance. We’ve seen what it looks like when someone receives a bed but resists any form of engagement or presence. The soil becomes a cover—not for rest, but for rebellion. One plot in particular sat dormant for months, filled only with excuses and absence. It drained time, energy, and Spirit. And every time we walked past it, it whispered back to us: avoidance allowed. That memory stays with us—not to shame the person, but to remind us that the soil itself bears witness to whether something is being cultivated or ignored.. It exists to cultivate becoming. And that requires surrender. To steward this space faithfully, we must hold the line: we are not here to simply host people. We are here to cultivate people. And cultivation requires agreement, alignment, and a shared willingness to enter a process far deeper than the surface. Without that, the work of the soil gets short-circuited, and the garden manager becomes a caretaker of dysfunction instead of a co-laborer in transformation.

So we bless those on other journeys. But we also boldly protect the path we’ve been assigned to steward. One of the most difficult dynamics we’ve had to confront is the subtle belief that people can grow in isolation, in a silo, outside the rhythms and relationships of the community God is cultivating here. While we respect each person’s space and timing, we’ve also seen how the expectation to always be inclusive can be used as a shield against accountability. Sometimes being expected to be inclusive becomes a way to avoid engagement, to resist surrender, and to excuse the absence of presence.

We never ask anyone to come to the garden. We trust that if they’re meant to be here, the Spirit will stir them—and when He does, they’ll come not to consume, but to co-steward. Presence here is never pressured. It is revealed. And when we don’t align, we don’t force it. There are other gardens built to host that kind of tolerance. This one was built to host transformation. If we don’t align, then we don’t align. And that’s not rejection—that’s clarity. There are other gardens for those who are looking for that kind of tolerance. But this garden was never built on tolerance. It was built on transformation.

Because this garden is not for everyone. It’s for those who are ready. Not perfect. Not complete. But ready—to be formed, to be changed, to be rooted.

And so, we’ve stopped filling garden plots to meet pressure or perception. We’ve chosen instead to hold them. To protect the process. To wait for the ones who are truly ready—not to consume the soil, but to become something through it. Covered beds make space for that kind of transformation. They create margin for our garden managers to walk in relationship instead of rescuing misalignment. They are a quiet declaration: we will not be ruled by pressure. We are led by peace.

But this clarity didn’t come overnight. For a long time, we struggled with what to do when garden beds were occupied by misaligned families—families who weren’t present, who weren’t stewarding, and who showed no signs of transformation. And yet, if we were honest, those beds weren’t just placeholders for them. They were placeholders for us too. A way to avoid confrontation. A way to delay the discomfort of releasing what wasn’t working.

We didn’t want to name their avoidance because we hadn’t yet faced our own. And part of that avoidance was rooted in something deeper—our misunderstanding of what it means to be inclusive. Somewhere along the way, in our own inadequacy to fully articulate what we are called to cultivate, we let tolerance creep in. We were often seen as an organization that should accept everyone just as they are—and while that may sound compassionate, it slowly became an excuse for people to remain unchanged. We mistook Kingdom welcome for cultural tolerance. We began to feel the pressure to carry what others refused to surrender, to excuse avoidance under the banner of grace, to enable stagnation in the name of hospitality.

But that is not love. That is not stewardship. True inclusion in the Kingdom never bypasses transformation—it clears the ground for it. Acceptance was never meant to be an endpoint; it was always meant to be an entry point. When the door stays open but no one is asked to walk through it, we are no longer cultivating—we are coddling. Anything less is a betrayal of the soil we’ve been called to protect.

And so, the misalignment lingered. The garden felt heavy. Our managers felt stretched. The soil—designed for peace—was starting to reflect our unrest. And as we delayed, the weeds grew. We told ourselves we were being patient. But really, we were avoiding. And the longer we avoided, the more the weeds multiplied—both in the soil and in our spirits. By the time we decided to clear the beds, what could’ve been a light task had become toilsome. The ground was tangled. Roots ran deep. And suddenly, we weren’t just removing debris—we were uprooting our own hesitation.

How true that is for us: the longer we avoid what God is asking us to confront, the more tangled things become.

A few months ago, we still didn’t have a great solution. But God reminded me of something from my past—a method I used years ago when farming. I used to tarp 100-foot rows with repurposed billboard vinyl to reclaim ground and suppress weeds. And as clear as day, God said, “Use that same method here.”

So we did. And when we laid those tarps, something shifted. The garden took a deep breath. No one said a word. But everyone felt it. Rest returned. Space opened. The spiritual atmosphere changed. The beds were no longer reminders of discomfort or management failure. They were declarations of obedience. We weren’t hiding the problem. We were making room for promise.

That moment taught us something profound: confidence in response to misalignment produces rest—not just in our team, but in the soil itself.

And here’s the sacred part. Right now, there are nine plots at rest. Covered. Tarped. Waiting. And they are not empty. They are already full—with anticipation, with preparation, with the whisper of Heaven that says: someone is coming. We don’t know their names. But the Spirit does. And our spirits are already aligning.

These beds are not just protected from misuse. They are preserved for arrival. For the weary. For the surrendered. For the ones who will know—when they stand at the edge of that bed—that God has gone before them and carved out a space just for them. That’s the kind of God we follow. And that’s the kind of garden we cultivate.

So we wait. Not in anxiety, but in expectancy. Not in control, but in confidence. Because what is birthed from peace will always bear fruit in season. And we know this much: the gate is getting narrower—not to keep people out, but to require that we come in differently. You can fit through. Anyone can. But not with hands full of control. Not with hearts tethered to preferences, timelines, or performance. Only open hands can fit through the gate. Only surrendered hearts will be met by God on the other side. And when they come—when you come—we’ll be ready.

Because something sacred happens when the moment arrives. When the one God has been faithfully cultivating appears—not announced, not rushed, but revealed. There’s no striving. No proving. Just a quiet, holy knowing. We meet them with joy. And in the presence of the Spirit, we reach down and peel back the tarp. Not to uncover soil—but to welcome a son or daughter home.

It’s not a transaction. It’s a reunion. This space was never preserved for the deserving. It was preserved for the surrendered. Not earned by effort, but held in obedience until the one God appointed was ready.

This is what it means to cultivate a Kingdom garden. Not just food, but family. Not just soil, but sons and daughters. Not just rest—but resurrection. So we wait. We watch. We protect what God has entrusted. And when the time comes, we will not hesitate.

We’ll peel back the tarp.
And we’ll say,
“Welcome. The garden’s been waiting for you.”

And as I laid the final tarp across the ninth bed, I felt it—not just in the air, but in my bones. The same rest that was covering the soil was covering me. Heaven doesn’t just call us to steward rest; it invites us to enter it. In that moment, I wasn’t just managing space. I was participating in sacred order. And my whole body knew it: this is what it feels like to be in alignment. This is what it feels like to walk at the pace of the Kingdom.