Back to the Garden

"This was Adam and Eve's perfect world. Not just fruit and fig leaves, but an entire race of people stretching their cognitive and creative powers to the limit to build a society of balance and justice and joy. Here the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve would learn life at the feet of the Father, build their city in the shadow of the Almighty, create and design and expand within the protective confines of his kingdom. The blessing of this gift? A civilization without greed, malice or envy, progress without pollution, expansion without extinction. Can you imagine it? A world in which Adam and Eve's ever-expanding family would be provided the guidance they needed to explore and develop their world such that the success of the strong did not involve the deprivation of the weak. Here government would be wise and just and kind, resources plentiful, war unnecessary, achievement unlimited and beauty and balance everywhere. This was God's perfect plan: the people of God in the place of God dwelling in the presence of God"
-Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden

This summer, I am gardening.

It began with the transplants. Some things need lots of time to grow, but our Canadian summer is often an afterthought of the year, as if in parenthesis in a sentence. Fall Winter Spring (Summer) . So we planted the onions and the peppers and the tomatoes in neat trays with soil from a bag, and we placed the trays in a climate-controlled greenhouse.

Some seeds we planted outdoors, right into the ground where they will live, tilling the ground first to break up the soil. The tiller made the garden, formerly a desolate strip of brown ground, seem alive, with straight rows and labels at the end of the rows. Peas. Snowpeas. Carrots. Lettuce. Everything has a different way to plant it, a different depth, different distance apart. I cut up seed potatoes and put them in the ground, careful for the eyes to be pointed towards the sky. The old giving birth to the new.

In June, for the first time, we enjoyed the bounty from our garden as the rhubarb ripened. In fact, we had more than enough rhubarb: enough to stew and can, enough to make into rhubarb muffins and rhubarb cakes, and a lot to give away. Now, we are enjoying strawberries. Each time we visit the strawberry patch, more are ripe and ready to harvest.

I have loved gardening this summer, and even though I don't do half as much as my parents do, I still enjoy it, and I still see God's kingdom in everything.

I have been reading The Epic of Eden, a book about how the Old Testament, and the Bible as a whole, is a story about bringing us back to the garden. God had a vision of what the world will be like. The fall from the garden in Genesis 3 did not change that vision, and God is trying to restore us, to redeem us to being the people of God, in the place of God, dwelling in the presence of God.

I like that the Garden of Eden is, well, a garden.

Because gardening teaches us a lot about who God is.

Gardens are beautiful. The Kingdom of God is beautiful.

Gardens take a lot of effort to plant and maintain. Our lives, lived intentionally with the goal of seeing God's glory, also need discipline.

We can't really control how our gardens grow. Sometimes, we take away all the weeds, we plant the correct distance apart and depth, we plant at the right time, and then things just don't grow. A frost comes and destroys the plants. A bird eats the seed. A deer nibbles at the leaves. Sometimes we don't know the reason. And sometimes, though we don't do anything much, a plant grows. We cannot control God's spirit. He only needs us to obedient: we prepare the soil, we plant, but it is God who makes the plant grow. It is the same, you see, with the Kingdom. We wait, and he comes.

We get rid of the bad stuff. Weeds. Potato bugs. Have you ever opened up a cob of corn only to find a worm has eaten half of it? That is the worst. It is the same with God. The fruit is no good if we don't remove the things that ruin the fruit. This is true in our own lives. There are rotten things that want to grow in our hearts. We must not let them. And we must remove them quickly, before they take over. The longer we let the rotten things grow, the harder it is to get rid of them. Anyone who has ever put off weeding their garden can tell you that.

We garden together. In my family, gardening is a communal activity. For me, it is a way to learn from my parents. It is the same in the Kingdom. Being a Christian isn't a solo activity. You can do it solo, but pretty soon you reach the limitations of yourself and your knowledge. I don't think I could garden solo. The ivy plant that died on my dorm room windowsill is a testament to that. My parents are passing on their knowledge about planting and harvesting, and one day I will teach someone.

We share our harvest. I've been helping out with my church's youth group this summer, which I love. One night I brought a few bunches of rhubarb with the hope that someone could take it off my hands. It was fun to share the rhubarb with some international students who had never tried our sour treat! When God gives us gifts, it is no fun to keep them for ourselves. And if my family's garden is any indication, he delights to give us so much that we absolutely have to give it away. My family has a thing for squash, for some reason. Squash don't take too much effort to grow and they tend to produce a lot of fruit. So every year we fill our cold room with mostly squash. If we tried to keep it all for ourselves and eat it throughout the year, it would decay. The only good thing is to give it away.

Everyone can garden. Our neighbour, just a young boy, came over one day when we were planting the leek and onion transplants. He helped us place them in the rows. We have other neighbours who are retired who spent hours a day in their garden. Young and old can garden. When I was in Mozambique, mostly everyone in the country had their machamba, a little plot of land where people grew produce for their family. Gardening is universal. All ages, all ethnicities, all ability levels-- everyone can garden. Just as everyone can know God, and be fully a part of His Kingdom.

And the final point about gardening and the Kingdom of God:

There is always enough.  Do you know how small a carrot seed is? It seems like it will not be enough. God makes it into enough. He takes what little we have to bring and multiplies it, makes it abundant.

*Inspired by Jesus' parables that tend to have lots of references to gardens, agriculture, growth and the like.*