Have you noticed that in a garden it is easier to experience God than nearly anywhere else? Praying while sitting in, looking at, or working in a garden is a direct connection to our Creator. Why is that?
I suspect it’s because it’s a return to the Garden of Eden. The close relationship that God intended to have with all of His human creations was first brought into reality there. Now He wants to restore for us the closeness that our first parents, Adam and Eve, lost.
One of my favorite chores is mowing the lawn. It’s good therapy. In the summertime, it gives me a weekly opportunity to turn something scraggly and problematic into a smooth expanse of beautiful green. As I’m riding the mower, my inner child remembers playing in the expansive, green yard of my grandfather’s childhood home. It’s a wonderful memory. It instantly restores the feeling of being accepted and free to be myself.
When my parents came to live with me and my husband, my dad sometimes commented on how much I enjoyed mowing the lawn. He said that it made him reminisce about how much he used to enjoy mowing. And then he always added: “I liked it so much that I never let anyone else do it.”
Why did he like it that much? Why do I?
During my teen years, Dad grew a vegetable garden in the side yard. I didn’t pay much attention to it, and he didn’t invite me to. Only after I bought my first house did I discover the joy of planting seeds, impatiently waiting for them to sprout, and finally delighting over them as they turned into something on my dinner plate with a better flavor than anything I bought in a store.
I was participating in God’s miracle of creation as well as the generosity of His abundance. My zucchinis grew huge and multiplied so much that I gave them away and still had too many!
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” (Gen. 1:29, NIV)
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Heb. 13:16, ESV)
God’s voice is easier to hear in a garden—or outdoors in any beautiful place—than anywhere else. I’ve found that the only place that’s better for connecting to God is in church where we can adore Jesus in the Eucharist. He is our Mediator, opening up communication between us and the Father.
Perhaps you have other special places where it’s easier to hear your Divine Daddy speaking to you. Not everyone can own a garden, but anyone can decorate a room with pictures of flowers and some live, potted plants, and use it as a prayer room.
One of my childhood’s greatest treasures came from my grandmother. Nana gifted me with a small, framed picture of garden flowers. Imprinted on it was a little poem:
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.
Although I had not yet planted my first garden, these words resonated in my soul throughout my teen years. I didn’t know why at the time.
It’s part of a longer work by Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858-1932), an English poet and hymn writer. Her father was an Anglican priest. Her husband, Gerald, was also an Anglican priest, but the two of them became Catholic in 1919. Perhaps she was my first patron saint!
God’s Garden
The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.
And I dream that these garden-closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,—
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
For He broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.
Let’s unpack that.
“The Lord God planted a garden in the first white days of the world”—the Garden of Paradise in which “God walked with the first of men.” God’s first desire for His relationship with humans was to be in close communion, walking together and talking as a loving Father with His beloved child. Today when we walk through a garden or any beautiful place that He created, we re-enter the Father’s first desire for us. Jesus restored this communion when He broke open the gate to Paradise through His “yes” in offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane “under the olive trees.”
What was the first sin of our first human father? Disobedience. He ate from the tree that God had forbidden. But it’s a much larger problem than that. We know that our first mother succumbed to temptation because she listened to the seductive tricks of the serpent, and she allowed herself to be fooled by him. But what was Adam’s temptation?
Our first father—like many fathers since—failed to serve his family as their protector against evil. Adam represents the man who has been given the truth but does not protect his soulmate (and by extension, their children) from the lies of the Devil. Where was Adam when Eve saw the serpent? He was with her (see Genesis 3:6). Silently watching. Silently cooperating with the lie because he did not speak up. Silently agreeing to the sin when he accepted the evil fruit that Eve gave to him.
What then do you suppose was Adam’s image of God? A Father who is silent when temptation strikes? Remember that Adam hid from God after the sin. He thought that he actually could hide! He is the father who teaches by his behavior the misconception that we can do whatever we please because the Father doesn’t see us; God is not always with us.
We have a choice: Follow in father Adam’s footsteps or follow Jesus to the Father who desires to sit with you in the garden, walk with you through life, and communicate His love for you. More than anything, Abba wants to have an intimacy with you that sprouts new life.
Photo by Florian GIORGIO on Unsplash
