Dear Friends,

I enjoy gardening. So Last Saturday at the spring
cleanup at church when Shirley Richardson said she was
going out to clean up the old plant debris in the
Memorial Garden, I quickly said I’d help her. I’ve been
doing the same with my perennial gardens at home.
With the early spring weather it’s been a joy to get
outside.

This got me thinking about gardens. I read an article a
while ago that said in some war torn countries they
intentionally plant peace gardens, to nurture life in the midst of death all
around them. A family in one of the churches I served intentionally bought a
house in a crime ridden poverty stricken neighborhood in North Minneapolis.
There was a vacant lot on the block where they lived, so they decided to turn
it into a neighborhood garden. Neighbors came out of their houses and met
each other. As they tended that that garden together, weeding it, picking the
vegetables together as they ripened, fear of each other turned into friendship.
There are also garden stories in the Bible. Genesis paints an idyllic image of
the Garden of Eden where God and humanity walked closely together. Jesus
went to a garden to pray before he was arrested - the Garden of Gethsemane,
a place where he poured out his heart to God. I Googled “gardening with
God” and got a long list of results. It seems this human fascination with
gardening is as old as the beginning of time. But for me, it is one of the
places and activities that I do where I feel God’s presence. There’s such joy
in planting things, caring for them, nurturing them and seeing them turn into
something beautiful. Maybe this is how God feels about us.

Happy gardening with God!

Blessings,