If you haven’t read my last blog Walking in the garden it may help to read that first. As I was writing that blog my mind was going haywire connecting concepts and questioning others and ultimately lead me to this question:
What if I am or can be the garden?
After spending a month amidst the garden, the Lord showed me the sweetness of walking with Him day in and day out, but also He showed me that I very well may be the Garden myself. Bear with me because this is just an idea that connected in my head and I hope you take this more as a comforting and encouraging metaphor than outright truth. With that being said, here I go in a attempt to explain the inter workings of my brain.
In the beginning God created the universe and all that exists in it from every planet and creature down to the last atom, including Adam. Mankind had the utmost honor and privilege to be entrusted with the stewardship of that beautiful creation as well as the nearly incomprehensible gift (I use the word gift with a lot of weight because no matter how much I racked my brain and asked others we couldn’t think of an adequate word to convey what I was intending) that it would have been to walk with God and all His glory. Wow, what a life that must have been. But back to the story, as you may know, Eve and Adam were tempted by the Devil and ultimately believed lies over the Truth and chose pride and mistrust over God. The consequences of that decision were severe, the world fell into sin and they were cast out of the Garden of Eden, no longer fit to steward the Garden and certainty no longer fit to be in the presence of God’s glory. With their choice came separation from God, no more walking through the Garden together, just separation from all that is Good and True. They chose death outside the garden over the fullness of life in the Garden. And the terrible thing is, we have made the same decision, we have chosen the grass on the other side when there is no grass greener than that found where He walks in the Garden.
But, speaking of gifts that are indescribable and unparalleled. Gifts that will never be able to be explained fully because of the weight they carry, we are offered the gift of Jesus’s perfect and spotless life in exchange for our own. With that exchange, that undeserved sacrifice, Jesus atoned for past, present, and future sins and so, we are bright back into communion with God. We once again have the privilege to walk alongside God in the Garden.
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” Romans 3:23-25ESV
This means Kingdom was once again brought here through Jesus. (Scripture) Once I accepted Jesus into my life, my old heart was removed and in the new heart I was given was planted a seed. Not just any seed, but a seed from His Kingdom, from the Garden. Isn’t that wild?!
So, thanks to the love of Jesus I have kingdom in me wherever I go, I carry the garden in me. I have a glimpse of heaven in me.
Now though I still have a new heart with that little seed sprouting, I still live in a broken world, something these past 7 months have made quite evident. This means if I don’t allow the Gardener to continue weeding, pruning, and planing, my heart can harbor weeds and brokenness still, even though it has no place there.
If I continue day to day and moment to moment to choose Jesus and His work as the Gardener in my life I can be a vessel of His love and provide shade, fruit, rest, and community for those around me. When my heart is a garden there is room for the fruits of the Spirit to grow.
How amazing that God allows us to be walking little gardens of His love?!
