If you haven’t taken a walk around our memory garden, you should take an opportunity to do so. That corner of our property each year explodes with color (I count 4 shades of purple and 5 shades of red, not to mention blues, yellows, and pinks) as spring flowers linger, and summer begin to bloom. The peonies are a particularly intense fuchsia that almost makes you squint.
And Yahweh God planted a garden towards the east, in Eden. There he placed the man whom he had formed…..Yahweh God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it. Genesis 2.8,15
John Brady and his regular helpers have given us a great gift. Our memory garden contains a stone bearing the names of our brothers and sisters who have passed while serving with us here at Manassas, but the flowers themselves bear vivid memories.
I think particularly of two straw hats that were often among them, and of Charles and Gloria Crane, who were digging and pulling beneath those hats. Gloria came up with the original garden plan for that corner of our property and I never pass it without feeling thankful for her – and John and the others. Of course God, as in all things, deserves our greatest thanks. The peonies are that particular shade because God made them so – imagined that particular color, and all other colors, and made our eyes capable of seeing colors. The entire experience of enjoying the beauty of a peony is a product of the mind and activity of God – a divine event.
Our first occupation was to garden. From the beginning, God intended us to commune with him, to garden, and to raise children. When God had given the man he had fashioned with his own hands life – life from his own breath – he took that man, so lovingly and carefully created, and placed him in a garden. The garden was part of their communion, for God had planted it, but it was for the man to cultivate and keep. Even after the fall, even after most of us had left the farm God keeps describing our communion in terms of the garden.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field…Matthew 13.24
I am the vine and you are the branches….John 15.5
The hard working farmer is the first to receive his share of the crops. II Timothy 2.6
The seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3.18.
Be patient brethren…see how the farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil…James 5.7
The garden is the way we commune with God. He made it. He made us. He made us for it. He made it for us. God requires our response, our activity, our effort. God makes that effort possible. This is true whether the crop is peonies or peace, or patience.
The Lord planted a garden – the Lord gave us a place of communion, and that communion is where we belong
