Gardening and THE Gardener

It is early May here in the Appalachians, in southwest Virginia. Everything is green. The lawn is mowed twice, could have been thrice, already. When you live in the wilderness every year is partially taken with chopping, hewing, burning the ever accumulating vegetation that abounds faster than you can whack it down. There is enough winter here to stop the machine for a few months, but by mid-March the weedy bounty has come to full bloom.

We have a large greenhouse about twenty-five yards from the house, and some raised beds up on the hill above. From these gardens we harvest a good portion of our vegetables with enough extra to trade for bread, eggs, pork, beef, and whatever else my industrious neighbors produce. We have learned a lot about gardening from all of this, but the best lessons about gardens and gardeners came by way of our pastors. They taught us to think about these with Biblical appreciation.

They taught us that the Bible, having begun with our ancestors in the garden of Eden, ends with all of the redeemed in the garden in the eternal city. It has blessed my soul to consider upon that truth. Whenever I re-read those short words about the Tree of Life my heart is blessed again. John wrote,

And he showed me a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of the street. And on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

This is wonderful on several levels. One of them is the way in which we are transported back to Genesis and the Tree of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve were created in a garden of God’s own making and told to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. The earth was initially wild but perfect, and needed to be tamed. God made the example for what to do by designing the first garden. He then called man to do similar work and transform the entire planet.

After the fall into sin man traversed a descent away from the tree, away from the garden, and often away from the God of that garden. We are now somewhere between the two gardens. All the misfortunes of sin and its accompanying sorrows follow our feet as we chug through what a few churchmen have labeled this veil of tears. I view our situation with a great deal more hope than this. I suppose if I lived in a place where Christians were being chased from their homes I might think differently, but I am viewing this life as a man who is on the way toward the best of everything.

It was pointed out to me that within, and all around, this story of the gardens, there is an expression of beauty that we often miss. Some of us think of the Bible as a theological treatise and a book of law. Others see a book of moral conceptions or notice its focus on historical events. What we rarely appreciate is the sheer beauty of the story. We miss the story and we doubly miss the beauty. We are always looking for facts. What God gave us is a beautiful story. Tangled within that story are a few books designed to sturdy our theology, books like Romans and Hebrews. However, most of the Bible consists of stories, many of which are just plain beautiful if we will only see.

After the crucifixion Mary went to the garden where Jesus’ body had been placed in a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. She discovered the tomb to be empty.

…she turned around, and beheld Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to he, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.”

Jesus said to her, Mary! She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher).

At that instant we find the Maker of the universe, the One who invented gardens, meeting a woman in a garden. The new Adam arises from the grave, in a garden, meets the woman, and goes forth to build the kingdom of heaven He has preached for the previous three years. I understand that in a real sense every passage of Scripture is good for doctrine, reproof, and correction. Yet, if we can not see the sheer beauty of the story here, we are suffering from a myopic shriveling that somehow needs to be healed. Even as I type this my eyes keep watering so much I can barely see the keys. The story God has given us is a bounteous literature. It is filled with strength, poetry, and beauty, the whole of which is greater than the parts. When it comes to the story of the garden and the Gardener it is the most compelling story on the planet.

Once I started noticing the built-in beauty of the Book I discovered something about the very nature of God. A portion of His mystery unfolds as we learn to see His beauty in His work. This changes us. It changes men. It gives to Christian civilization a superior vision for what the kingdom is, and what to do to rightly build that kingdom. So, here we arrive at theology proper. We start with beauty and we end with more than we first thought. We discover that the importance of the garden, is wrapped in the robes of subtle beauty. I am not suggesting we take on the eyes of the mystics. I am suggesting that we often have a difficult time, like the blind men of Bethsaida, seeing men walking about as trees. It can be good to have our seeing miraculously cleared.

For Christian Civilization,

Don Schanzenbach 5-5-12

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