"Now the LORD God had planned a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground- trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Genesis 2:8-9
The irony is not lost on me when it comes to the amount of comfort I feel in the garden. We were created for the garden. We were originally placed in this abundant, beautiful place. We were able to have constant communion with our Father. There was peace and joy and only good things.
The Garden puts us in not only a heart posture but also a physical posture to naturally praise God. We are usually on our knees, heads down and for me at least, mind "mostly" cleared, and heart always opened. We are surrounded by so much creation and life, beauty and mystery there. God is everywhere in the garden.
I also don't skip over the fact that as the world gets further and further from how Abba intended it to be, the more people are coming back to this life, the slow down, the simpler, the stepping away from the grind of the world and coming back to the grind of the farm and the family. In these last few years, I have watched the desire to homestead go from being a one-off topic of conversation to being an everyday conversation with a multitude of people. I have seen my generation and the generation before me dig into learning how to do things that were lost along the way. I have watched YouTubers channels grow, I have watched Instagram aesthetics change, TikTok videos go viral, and the list goes on.
The garden has become the sanctuary for so many, a place where they are finding not just happiness, but joy and peace and serenity. There is a reason. It is where we were designed to be. We were not created to have millions of bits of information thrown at us every second of every day. We were not created to have a screen in front of us 23 hours a day. We have become a world of chase the next thing, buy the next new toy, go the next cool place; so much so that we no longer actually get to enjoy that next thing, toy or place because we have to work even harder to still do more.
The garden is where I make my decisions...even in the dead of winter or the transition of moving to a new one, where nothing is growing. The garden is where I decided to step away from what the world expects and get back to the person that I was created to be, the woman that God had planned before I tangled it all up. The garden is where most of my prayers are prayed, it is where I stop and listen for Him, it is where I see little miracles that remind me just how important the details are.
No matter where you are physically you can also have a garden. You can also find this peace. It might be in a small 4x8 bed in your back yard or pots on your apartment balcony; it might even just be a grow pot on your kitchen counter. Turn off the noise and just enjoy whatever garden space you have. Make that space something that is peaceful and calm and quiet. And even if you aren't a born-again believer, you might just get to feel something that will change your whole life.
May the soil be fertile, the harvest be bountiful, and the farmer never grow weary. -Farmer Mandy
Eph. 3:20-21
Lord, I ask that you do abundantly more than I can ever do on my own. -Amen
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