Things That Matter Most

Things That Matter Most

Gardening and God

by

After an incredible week with my team, I was told I needed to take the weekend and “not work” for a change. Honestly, it took me a while to figure out exactly what this meant for my schedule. For the first time in a while, I had a few days with no deadlines and several projects sitting on the back burner just waiting for me to take a look.

But “not work” was the instruction of the day, and I decided to follow it.

Instead of coding, I got up early on Saturday morning and spent some time in the garden instead. Seeing the marked change in my vegetables from last weekend to this was wonderful. The lettuce is just about ready to become a salad. The carrots are beginning to take off. The radishes – some were actually ready to eat! The garlic is growing like a weed. The tomatoes, though still small, are finally starting to come into their own.

And the weeds apparently realized I was out of town and started to multiply, too.

I spent half my Saturday morning on my hands and knees pulling up tiny weed seedlings to keep them from taking over my garden. I then turned my attention to the stone walkway and started pulling out other seedlings poking through the cracks.

Then I saw something remarkable. It seems a beautiful and small violet has taken root in between the stones in the center of my walkway. Not only that, it chose this weekend to bloom!

Unfortunately, it chose to make its home literally in the middle of the path between the back yard and the front. All foot traffic will pass over it. Every time I move the yard debris bin, it will be on that path. If you were going to be a flower and pick where to seed, this would be the worst possible location.

I tried my hardest to loosen the plant so I could move it, but the attempt completely destroyed what was a beautiful flower. If only it had planted itself somewhere else …

Immobility

Whenever I garden, I think back to some of the imagery around gardening in the Bible. One of God’s first acts after creating the Earth was to plant a garden – and He created man specifically to help him tend that garden.

Jesus’ parables often involve gardening. A gardener sows seeds only to have the enemy sow weeds among them in the night. Seeds fall on the path, among thorns, and on good soil. The Lord is a gardener who prunes the branches of a vine in order that they should produce fruit.

It’s difficult to be working among creation and not think of the creator.

It’s also difficult to miss the lesson behind a beautiful flower growing in the wrong location. The flower was, of course, perfect. It was straight, healthy, had at least three gorgeous blossoms on it, but it was dead center in the middle of a path. The exact wrong place for it to be in this particular garden.

I did everything I could do to relocate the flower, but its roots were deep and my attempts to move it to where it was supposed to be were painful – even to the point of death. Had the flower’s seed just blown a few feet more … Had the flower’s roots been shallower and easier to relocate …

How often are we like that flower? How often do we settle deep roots in the exact wrong location in God’s garden? How often are we so resistant to his gentle guidance to the right location that we experience pain and destruction in our lives?

How often do we stand in the wrong city, the wrong college, the wrong job, the wrong relationships, the wrong habits and argue that God still loves us despite our resistance to go where He wants us to go? We could be the most beautiful flower in the garden, but growing up in the center of the path will lead only to pain as the Gardener, gentle as He is, tries to uproot us and put us where we belong.

The violet in my garden didn’t make it. Will we?

Comments

  1. Dear TTMM,

    I love your website. Thank you for allowing me to post this.

    Everything was created for a special purpose, and nothing was created simply for no reason. ALL of mankind was created for a purpose. In God’s eyes, it doesn’t matter what skin color you are, how smart, dumb, beautiful you are, if your rich, or poor, God almighty loves us just the same, good, or bad. No matter where we are planted in God’s garden, He gave us a purpose. It is a purpose that hasn’t been fulfilled yet. We were not created in order to just die.

    For the world may look bad in some people’s eyes. They may want to take the easy way out and push a button and destroy all of their enemies. These so called enemies, are actually related to you, and I. We are a big family, and we are ALL related. I ask you, would this barbarianism way of thinking of destroying the enemies solve the world’s problems by killing off most of mankind? No! It is shortsighted thinking.

    One of the things that I’ve learned in my life is that we have to empathize with the enemy. What does this mean? Standing in your enemies footsteps of thoughts, feelings, joys, sorrows and their life-long history. If you were to do that, then you would see that they are most likely no different that you or I. God peers straight through the all the murk, and only sees the good in a person’s beautiful heart. Mankind is ill equipped to do that. God is greater, His reasoning surpasses like no other.

    A principle that God let be known in the famous Bible book of Matthew. It’s Matt 5:43, 44, 45 where we are to continue to Love our enemies. Also from the wonderful book of Matthew, God shows that He will NEVER be partial since he allows the the sun to rise on both the wicked, and the good. He allows the rain on the wicked and righteous. You see, God was making these statements to be known for they are His PRINCIPLES. God’s Principles NEVER, ever change. He loves the good people, and He loves the bad people.

    I ask you, do you think that this principle is fair? For some people, they think I am their enemy. So if I am their enemy, with their reasoning, I shouldn’t have God’s favor, and I should die because I won’t follow their way of thinking. However, with my thinking, I love these people who condemn me, and they are NOT my enemies, and they shouldn’t be destroyed. Who’s principles am I following? Is it God’s the One who gave these vital life-long lessons of principles who gave His only begotten Son to die for ALL mankind? Is it God’s because He lets it rain on the good and the bad? God’s principles of Love, and compassion are far superior than that of humankind and their shortsighted vision.

    True Love extends its love, and is fair, just, honorable, forgives, brings out the good and is compassionate to ALL.

    Fake love holds back, is selective, holds grudges, doesn’t reason, quick to condemn, hard to please, haughty.

    So, in answer to your vital question… “Will we” make it? With “MY” God whom I worship with all of my heart, soul and vitals, I give you a HEARTY YES!!! You wont understand what I am saying now, but you haven’t seen what wonderful things lie ahead for ALL OF MANKIND!

    Please be hopeful because we have God’s True Love. True Love Never Fails, God’s Love never fails. Look at the BIG picture. Remember this, all positive things, belong to God, and it is free for everyone. All negative things such as death and destruction, annihilation does not belong to God!

    There is Hope for ALL mankind with the True God Almighty. His loving principles never change.

  3. I am not sure.. I don’t believe in God not because I am resistant to it but for I was not born and told to have faith in God… I appreciated your work! But I do think we ourselves are the ones and only to save ourselves.

    • You don’t have to be born into it to have faith in God – for many people it’s an explicit choice they make to or not to believe. If you don’t believe, that’s your decision and I won’t hold it against you.

      As for who does the saving, I both agree and disagree. Keep in mind I’m coming from the place of a strong faith in God, so that shapes how I feel about this a great deal. Ultimately, there is no condemnation apart from a creator whose existence has established a difference between right and wrong. Therefore there is no salvation without that creator, either. This is because a creation that has erred cannot redeem itself – there is no way to earn that salvation. Salvation itself must be given as a gift.

      So on the one hand, there is absolutely nothing we can do on our own to save ourselves.

      However, I said here that salvation is a gift. Gifts are not compulsory, they must be received. No one – not even God – is going to force salvation on you. Just as I said faith is a choice, so too is turning to God and accepting his free gift of salvation. It’s a choice you make to receive, or a choice you make to reject (and let me be clear, there is no abstention here – the gift is offered, whether you say “no” explicitly or just ignore it, you’re rejecting it).

      So on the other hand, there is no one beside ourselves who can choose for us to be saved.

      I’m trying not to make this seem to nuanced, but I’m hoping the distinction comes across.