There is no perfume so heavenly as a blooming garden on a warm day.
There is a particular garden that always catches my attention when I go out for a ride on my bicycle. I love cycling with the sun and wind in my face, and fire in my muscles! I can hear the birds singing, and I can smell the food that’s being cooked as I pass by houses. There is one house, however, that I love to pass on my rides, because it has one of the most exquisite gardens that I’ve ever seen.
Picture it. A colonial-style home with white columns. There’s a dainty white table and chairs on the lawn. There are oak trees surrounded by spider plants. There are pink and white flowers stretching up from the ground. It’s a picture that you want to breathe in. I usually slow down my pace when I approach this house just to appreciate the beauty of it.
Several weeks ago, a friend and I were walking through my neighborhood, and I purposefully directed our path to go by this house. My friend looked at the house and said, “Wow! You know that’s an old garden. You don’t grow a garden like that overnight.” I smiled, thought about my modest yard, and agreed.
There are a lot of planting/farming/gardening metaphors in the Bible. Throughout history, civilizations were largely agricultural. So, it makes perfect sense that God would use agricultural terminology when speaking to his people. Unfortunately for those of us living in the Western world, we have become more industrial and have lost an understanding of the land. This loss of understanding in physical terms can also affect our understanding in spiritual terms as well.
The psalmist often compared a righteous man to a tree planted by rivers of water. (See Psalm 1, Psalm 52:8, Psalm 92:12-13, Psalm 104:15-17 )
The Song of Solomon uses the garden metaphor to depict a healthy sexual relationship between man and wife. (See Song of Songs 1:16-17 , Song of Songs 2:1-15, Song of Songs 4:11-15; Song of Songs 5:1, Song of Songs 7:7-13)
Matthew 13 is almost wholly comprised of parables about planting and growing to illustrate how we develop faith and apply God’s word to our lives.
The scriptures listed above are just a few of the many scriptures about planting, watering, growing, gleaning, and harvesting that can be found in the Bible. Moses wrote laws about it. David sang Psalms about it. Solomon romanticized it. Jesus applied it practically to our lives.
One day, on yet another bike ride, I was talking to the Lord about my life and was astonished to pass by my favorite house and garden only to see chaos! The owners were outside. Piles of greenery were discarded in heaps. Pots of plants were lined up, fresh from the store and ready to be planted in the ground. The dainty table and chairs were being vigorously re-painted. I felt the Lord speak softly to me: You need to learn more about gardening.
So, I brought a mint plant home after a visit at my parents’ house. I watched as the stress of the move killed most of the leaves. I plucked off the dead leaves, placed the plant in the sun, and watered it. New leaves came in.
Then, I purchased some new plants and began to make a compost for the bottom of my pots. I cut up the stems of an old bouquet and threw them in the pots. I collected dead leaves and put them in the pots. I noticed some dead insects on my porch and decided to throw them into the pots as well. Decaying plants and bugs provide excellent nutrients for the dirt which grows the plants.
Gardening is rather nasty if you think about it.
I started looking at my plant beds, which had been developed prior to my moving into the house. While the plants are prospering, so were the weeds that were sprouting up. I got down on my hands and knees in order to extricate the parasitic undergrowth of weeds. Before I knew it, 2 hours had passed. I was covered in dirt. A trash bag was full of weeds.
Gardening is hard work.
The results of good gardening, however, are beautiful.
One of my favorite verses of the Bible is Song of Songs 4:12, which I want to include here in different versions for context :
“A garden enclosed Is my sister, my spouse, A spring shut up, A fountain sealed.” (KJV)
“Dear lover and friend, you’re a secret garden, a private and pure fountain.” (MSG)
“My darling bride, my private paradise,
fastened to my heart.
A secret spring are you that no one else can have—
my bubbling fountain hidden from public view.
What a perfect partner to me now that I have you.” (TPT)
I love this verse, because I love the imagery of a person as a garden. I love the intimacy of being an “enclosed garden” both physically and spiritually. The relationship between the King and his beloved in Song of Songs is accepted as a template for marriage, much like marriage is biblically understood to be a physical representation of Christ’s relationship with the Church. Just as I reserve my body for my spouse, I reserve my soul for God.
As much as I do love to share parts of my life with people, there are parts of my life that I only feel comfortable sharing with God. The scripture teaches that God discerns the hearts of men (and women, of course). He is the only one who I trust to tend to the garden of my life. When I let God and his word take full effect in my life, I am letting the Master Gardener take control. If I don’t allow God into my life, I won’t be a garden but an overrun wilderness – a desirable place for predators to nest.
Sometimes we pass by someone else’s garden, like I do on my bicycle. We see the blooms and wish that our gardens were as fruitful. For the most part, we do not see the Gardener at work. We don’t see the piles of dirt, the decay, and the rain that worked together for those beautiful plants to grow. So, when we welcome the Lord into our lives, we are surprised when we feel like we’re being buried, when death and heartache are on every side, and storms of life blow over us. We want that lovely, picturesque garden, but we don’t want the tearing, uprooting hand of the Gardener.
Have you felt the Gardener’s hand on your life? Do you feel his painful grasp on the roots of your generational addictions and thought patterns? Those generational sins do not make up your root system – they are the weeds that encircle your roots, and they can be plucked out. Do you sense his touch in the midst of the troubles that have come upon you? Our sufferings are just compost that enriches us where we are planted.
Don’t worry about what the Gardener is doing to you. You can trust that He is working all things for your good. Ultimately, His work is going to ensure that you bloom and flourish!
And there is nothing so beautiful and heavenly as your garden will be if you’ll allow the Gardener to perform his work.
As Honey for Sweetness 