Gardening always teaches me spiritual things. After many years of ignoring the call to go dig in the dirt, I am rediscovering the joy God’s creation and trying to forget my past failed attempts at nurturing healthy plants. Even in my novice attempts, I am finding more than ever that God has embedded a picture His truth in everything He has created. Jesus used things in nature as parables not just because they provided a handy illustration, but because He created them to tell the story! Creation has followed man in the fall, and Creation has mirrored the miracle of life and rebirth in spite of the constant presence of death and decay. The further man is separated from the natural world by civilization and technology (not saying these are bad.. I love both) the less we can see these pictures. The organic way of life becomes foreign and we become synthetic in our thinking.
A few things I’ve learned (again) this week.
God is the Source of life, period. We don’t birth believers any more than we make a seed sprout. I know the Word teaches this, but in the garden it comes to life before your eyes, from abstract to absolute truth. As Christians, we can plant, water, nurture, but the whole entire process of life is of God. We are privileged to work with Him, but it is most certainly His work. At any point where we attempt to force something to happen, we will kill that life.
How life comes from a “dead” seed is a mystery. You can create the right conditions, but you can’t force it to sprout. We expend great effort to explain, define, and study this mystery – but in the end, it’s still a mystery. It happens underground where we can’t see it. It happens in hearts and we can’t know it – until the green shows through.
Fruit is a great thing, but harmful if brought too soon. It drains the plant of vitality and health, causing less productivity. Pruning premature blooms and dead leaves strengthen the plant and help the roots dig deeper. How many things have been cut off our lives that we were so excited about, that we believed had great promise? It wasn’t time yet.
The Body of Christ – a living organism, built from living stones. This life is expressed as the living stones connect to each other and are all unified in their connection to the Mind of Christ (the head). The two great commands of the New Covenant; Love the Lord with all your heart, and each other as He has loved us – bind this body together. When this happens, greater works this worldwide Body does, than when Jesus inhabited a single human body on the Earth, as He foretold. Now He inhabits millions. Whatever is synthetic and of man will be stripped away so the Body can freely move in response to His Mind, not ours.
Many people who have been raised with a mixture of the synthetic imitation, and organic life would be greatly harmed if their man-made props were suddenly taken away. But the Master Gardener knows each plant and gently cares for each one. He has been gently taking away the false and the man-made out of my life for along time. My husband and I joke that God is a hippie at heart. Maybe it’s why we are drawn to that way of life as well. It’s a lifestyle (minus the free love and drugs) that lives close to God’s pictures.
Maybe I will take up sheep herding next.
8thDay4Life 
I just minutes ago finished studying this passage in John 15. Your insights on pruning are worth pondering on some more. Thanks for posting!
LOVE the book of John, especially the last few chapters. Have so much I want to write about that. Can’t seem to get it all out. There is much to ponder from John. Thanks for the comment!
Yes, the pruning! And what has really impressed me so much, yet I can’t quite express it (maybe you or your readers can find the words I am looking for) is the importance of the hidden time. When I was intensely studying our Lord’s parables, I was struck by how most of the parables were about something that had to be hidden before you could see the reality of what it was. The sower and the seed, the tares growing alongside the wheat, the planted mustard seed, the hidden leaven, hidden treasure, and a pearl – being secretly formed in the oyster. What could be better than hidden time with our Lord?! And, as I read somewhere, even the meaning of the parables were hidden, except to those who came and asked Him!
That is an awesome observation! Can see that in the life of Jesus as well. Wow. Thanks.. will be thinking on this.
i love this!
“God is the Source of life, period. We don’t birth believers any more than we make a seed sprout.”
…is my favorite statement! And I third that hippie comment! 🙂 hehehehe I am definitely drawn to a simpler life than i had before so that my focus on HIm is clearer. I want to see some pics of that garden!!
Garden is a generous word for what I have going there!! ha. (it’s soooo tiny) And this week we have had quarter size hail.. and frost. Ask me if I love Texas. But it looks like we might get a bite or two eventually. I will post facebook pics after it recovers from hail damage!