A Voice in the Garden

Garden:
1. a plot of ground, usually near a house, where flowers, shrubs,vegetables, fruits, or herbs are cultivated.

2.

a piece of ground or other space, commonly with ornamentalplants, trees, etc., used as a park or other public recreationarea: a public garden.

3.

a fertile and delightful spot or region.

For those of you who have read previous postings or know me in person, you know that I love gardens. You also know that I have often dreamed of God's garden and being with my Father there. 

Especially when the weather is like it is now in Iowa: Cold, bleak, empty, dead, grey,and depressing, I love to think about being in a warm garden. I was blessed to have grown up on a farm where my father's summer pride was large gardens of fruits and vegetables and flowers of all kinds and colors. 

In the Spring I would often go out barefooted and armed with a scissors to the lilies and the tulips, lilacs and apple blossoms, clipping and collecting the precious buds. Then, I'd carry my treasures back to the kitchen where they would reside in a large vase (or 2 or 3) on the table, adding brightness, color, and delightful scents to the place where I was doomed to work on my school, giving me hope that summer would come. 

In the summer, I'd have my own plot of watermelons to look after and weed. I loved this! One time I babied my watermelons so much that I harvested one that weighed 52lbs and was so large that I couldn't get my arms around it to bring it into the house. Thankfully my dad hefted it for me. :)

So, maybe I'm a little late to have this epiphany, but isn't it a wonder that God created a garden? That's what He made from day one and it's where He put all his treasured animals and His people. The Garden. Perhaps this is why when my heart longs to be with Jesus, it longs to be in a garden as well. Perhaps any farmer's garden is an exact display of the world as we know it. Full of weeds, in need of water, scattered with rocks and broken glass but owning to fertile places and rich soils. 

When I left for Nicaragua, my heart was is need. I've said this before, I know. I told the Lord before I left, "Show me whatever you want to show me, take me where ever you want to take me.. just be there when I get there." And often here, back at school, where I spend most of my awake hours secluded and away from people, when my heart is in the most pain, I ask the Lord to rescue me away and give me a taste of His presence in His garden. I love imagining what it shall be like when I get there for real. 

On Sunday morning in Nicaragua, as we began our drive to the village, I was just amazed at where the Lord had taken me. As I remembered the pain in my heart I asked the Lord to give me a taste of His garden so that I would be refreshed enough to do what ministry I was supposed to do. His peaceful voice responded to my request, "This is my garden, Fern. You are already here."

As I looked at the heat scorched grass, dirt, and piles of trash along the way I thought, "But God, your garden is beautiful and perfect and wonderful. How Can this be it?"

And He reminded me in my heart that the garden I was wanting was heaven, but I am not called to that now. Not yet. For now I have been called to an earthly garden that needs to be tended. It needs to be watered and cared for, planted and harvested. There are rocks and broken things and trash that prevents things from growing and so we have been called to do our best to remove them. Some places are more dry than others and some are more fertile. Some things grow well, somethings take lots of patience and effort. We can expect to get dirty and cut and splintered and blistered along the way, of course, since that is what all gardeners get. Sunburned, perhaps, too if we're not careful. 

But in this garden we have hope. We have a light that will always be warm and cause us to grow as long as we don't hide from it. We will always have the water we need to quench our thirst as long as we make the effort to drink it. 

Perhaps, as believers, we read the verse in Matthew 28 where God says to go make disciples and we think, "We have all been called to be pastors or preachers, missionaries and ministers" and then we think, "But that is not for me. Only a few people will be pastors but I am called to be a business man or a lawyer, a doctor or a teacher."

And there is nothing wrong with that at all. We are called to different things. But my thinking is, when God said, "Go" He meant more as, "Go into all my garden and plant the seeds, watering them and harvesting them and producing more seeds through one plant. Do this as lawyers or doctors or teachers or business men. Do this as mothers and fathers and students and pastors. Just go. Always plant, always water, always tend to and weed and nurture and care for my garden." 

And then He gave us our seeds. He gave us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control. He said, "Plant these. Grow them. harvest them and share them. Eat them and be satisfied. And as you plant them and they grow, they will be the choice morsels that you share with my starving, empty, broken world. They will eat them and they will grow."

And maybe "Preaching the Gospel" is not only a set of words or a script on how Christ died in our place but the simple display of the fruits God gave us. After all, His whole act of creation and sending Christ to us and redeeming us again has love and joy, peace and patience, kindness, goodness and gentleness and self control perfectly weaved into to it, making the story one of the most beautiful displays of who God is. 

We are all called to the same thing we were created for, to keep and tend to and care for God's garden. It didn't stop when Adam and Eve were kicked out, it just got a little more difficult. And there are days when we fall. Just like we have from the beginning of time. And we hide and we cower and we feel shame and separation. And God comes seeking and finding asking, "Where are you?" Not because He doesn't know but because we don't. But He clothes us in the wool of His precious lamb and tells us to continue to work the ground and bare fruit that will last. And while we work tend to His garden on earth, He tends the Garden of our heart, being the ultimate example of how we are to be. 

He pulls our weeds, waters our dryness, ad removes the rocks and broken things that prevent things from growing. He creates in us the most beautiful flowers and fruits that can only be attributed to His handiwork. And while He does this He says, "Go. Do what I do. Get dirt on your hands and sweat on your brow. Be blistered and burnt and cut. And I will be with you, even to the end of the age. I will work with you and next to you. I will help you and sustain you."

And so we press on. We labor and toil and sweat and tire. But all the while, there is a voice in the garden telling us He is proud. Telling us we are loved. Telling us we are beautiful. And one day, we will see the face the belongs to the voice.