An invitation to become gardeners

Spring flowers in our garden

This week our long-awaited seeds arrived in the post. This, in combination with the warm, spring weather has meant that in the afternoons I will often stop my work on the computer, go outside and start planting lettuce, spinach and chard seeds.

When I am gardening, especially on a pleasant, sunny day, I feel fulfilled. Gardening is one of those activities that are clearly good and wholesome.

Gardening is at the heart of our identity as humans, according to the Bible, which begins with a garden given to the first people to look after and maintain. That garden, like others, served both the practical function of providing food and the aesthetic purpose of nourishing us with beauty: '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' (Gen. 2:9).

The more I clear away debris and rocks from the soil, the more I feel as though I am uncovering or getting in touch with a truer part of myself.

Perhaps this is why, over the past few months of preparing the garden, the song 'Just Showed Up for My Own Life' by Sara Groves has been playing in my head.

In the song, she begins singing about living a false life -- until suddenly she accepts her real identity and comes alive:

Spending my time sleep walking
Moving my mouth but not saying a thing
Hoping the changes would take by working their way from the outside in
I was in love with an idea
Preoccupied with how a life should appear
Spending my time at the surface, repairing the holes in a shiny veneer

There's so many ways to hide
There's so many ways not to feel
There's so many ways to deny what is real

And I just showed up for my own life
And I'm standing here taking it in and it sure looks bright


I wonder how common this experience of 'showing up for [our] own life' is. So often we get stuck in the habits of 'sleepwalking' and 'spending [our] time at the surface' that we never go deeper, unless something tragic or otherwise life-changing comes our way.

For example, perhaps one of the unexpected gifts of the coronavirus is that it can remind us of what is essential. People are spending more quality time with their loved ones and reaching out to people they care about. At least in some communities, neighbours are being kinder and more thoughtful of each other. The natural world and wildlife seem to be uncovering a silence they had forgotten, now that humans are travelling less by car, airplane and other forms.

It is unclear what causes Groves' change of perspective, but at the heart of her song, she quotes St Irenaeus of Lyons, who said, 'The glory of God is a human fully alive.'

Thus, Groves suggests that it is ultimately God who has brought her to life.

This Holy Week and Easter, Christians will be thinking much about someone else whom God brought to life. Jesus' return from the dead is the fullest example of someone 'showing up for [their] own life.'

Damson tree in blossom

By offering his beautiful, perfect life to God on the cross, Christ transformed the cross into the Tree of Life, whose leaves bring healing to the world (Rev. 22:2). In rising from the dead, Christ defeated death itself, carving a path for us to follow, like the first blossoms on a tree in spring prompting many more to come.

Thus, Holy Week and Easter are at their heart about becoming 'fully alive' in Christ.

In other words, Christ invites us to become gardeners, tending the soil of our hearts so that we can receive the seed of Christ, which will grow in us to become the tree of the kingdom of God, providing shelter for others (Matt. 13:31-32).