Apr 12, 2013

In the Garden

There is an old hymn that bears the name of this post, and its gentle refrain sings the words
...And He walks with me and he talks with me, And He tells me I am His own, And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known...
 I don't think it was an accident that the place God chose to put Adam and Eve was a garden. In fact, He didn't just plunk them down in the middle of some pretty flowers and call it good, nope, Genesis tells us that He prepared a place for them. He separated the water from the land, separated the day from the night, added animals and plants, and then He created man and woman and placed them into what we know as Eden. Eden...the closest place to Utopia we could ever hope to find. 

God was first. He was there before anything was, so He gets to be first at everything. Therefore, He was the first gardener. And since that is the first thing recorded in the Bible, His written communication to us, I think gardening is special to Him. Even Jesus used a lot of agricultural references in His parables and teachings.

I have started a garden. There are a lot of benefits to having a garden, but the one I hope to get is knowing God's mind a little better. So I am out there in the yard with my hands in the dirt realizing what God meant when He told Adam that, "...by the sweat of your brow you will have food to eat..." (Genesis 3).

I think to myself, He should have added, "and by the stinging of ants."

So, maybe there will be some more posts in the future about my gardening adventures and how God speaks to me there. Would y'all like that?

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