Gardening With God

Humanity's first glimpse of God happened in a garden. Since then we have tried to duplicate its beauty. We plant flowers, grasses, trees. Place fountains. Hang chimes. Augment anemic soils. We water, dig, and make our knuckles bleed. But Paradise eludes us.

Our gardens are environments of perpetual change. The cypress reach their heights of glory as the fruit trees wane. The daffodils finish their blooms just as the liquidambar begins to bud. Pansies and snapdragons wilt in the same heat that brings the roses alive. We are not dissuaded.

Just as a prism of glass miters light and casts a colored braid, a garden sings sweet incantations the human heart strains to hear. Hiding in every flower, in every leaf, in every twig and bough, are reflections of the God who once walked with us in Eden.

To those who give Him permission, He is an unfailing gardener.

The same heart-healing medicine found in the leaves of foxglove can also cause a heart to fail. If love maketh a heart merry and also causes it to break, a medicine for its benefit would most certainly have similar risks.

Myth says a heart needs merely to receive love to thrive. But it is in giving and in receiving that the heart grows strong. Amateurs recklessly divvy it up. Exchanges are seldom equitable. Wounds are inflicted. Weaklings withdraw.

But love is a daring dance of surrender. A dance of courage. Love is a labored waltz. The speckled trumpets of the foxglove sound revelry to hearts waiting to dance.

Continued on page 2: God empowers the spirit to blossom along what may often seem a stairway of thorns. »