May 15

“Then God said, let the land produce vegetation…and God saw that it was good!” (Gen. 1:11-13)

After a slow start my wife and I (along with some fine help from my youngest son) finally had a chance to work in our garden this past weekend.  While I like a flowering garden with something on display throughout the year my wife, practical as always, tends towards vegetables but together we almost always have something blooming in our small suburban patch of ground. Whenever we dig in the dirt to plant, tend and, with God’s blessing, grow our garden I think of what a gift our garden is; what a blessing it is that God has given us a small chance to experience the magnitude of his creation.

There are so many different types of gardens and gardeners around the world – producing foodstuffs, flowers and medicines that it makes me wonder if God’s curse to Adam that he would have to grow his food and to “eats the plants of the field” (Gen. 3:18-19) was really intended just to punish. Could it also be understood as a means by God to remind Adam of his connection to creation despite his separation from the finest garden ever? Certainly a good garden or a fertile field requires hard work and effort and doubtlessly Adam’s life as a farmer after the “fall” was hard but each spring he would be reminded, as we are, that life begins with God’s touch – His hand is always present in our plantings, our weeding and in the production of our lives.

Dear God, Thank you for our garden, for our farms and for the chance to see in the beauty of our flowers and the bounty of our harvest your hand in creation. Truly you have blessed us with a bountiful planet. Amen