My Garden

 

My Garden

                For a
few years I have been convicted about judging others in a way that would keep
me from getting to know them on a deeper level, and for a long time I have been
trying to put into words as eloquently as one of my leaders put it.

God created us with a yearning for
a Garden he placed Adam and Eve in the most beautiful garden in all creation in
the beginning. At the end of the bible Revelation talks about the new garden
that he will live in, and right in the middle he sends his son to die on a dead
tree to sum up the in-between. Therefore all of us have a desire for our garden
only man wanted to build cities and live in comfort, but God’s desire is for us
to keep and cultivate our gardens. Spiritually we all have our gardens that God
has placed on our hearts weather it is a desire to feed the hungry, or learn a
fear of God, learn how to love, or become a teacher. We all have gardens that
God has given us to “keep and to cultivate” and he has placed similar desires
on other people’s hearts.

                In
Genesis when God creates Adam and Eve, he says “be fruitful and multiply and
fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Gen 1:28 (esv)) before they
fell. Eve eats the fruit as Adam is with her and God casts them out of his
presence for he is too holy, still he tells them “I will surely multiply your
pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall
be for your husband and he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16). Also to Adam he
says “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the
days of your life;” BUT “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”. Before
Adam and Eve messed up God says I want you to keep and cultivate the ground,
and be fruitful and multiply. Adam and Eve messed up and God says you cannot
stay in the garden but STILL, be fruitful and multiply but through much pain.
STILL cultivate and keep your garden , but by the sweat of your brow all the
days of your life.

                In
hearing this message, (it was much longer and waaay better said than what I
just remembered to write down) I started to think hmmm what is my spiritual
garden that God has asked me to keep and cultivate.

                For the
past few years I have been praying for God to give me the ability to be able to
see past people’s walls that they put up and the fake faces they put on to
guard themselves from getting hurt, to look past any awkward insecurities and
to really see to the heart of people and love them for who God made them.
That’s my garden. I can’t find it anywhere but I know its in the bible
somewhere, Paul says to consider and earnestly seek each other and cultivate
each other to bear fruit, and that is the garden that God has led me to keep
and I must dig deep into my heart through the “pain and sweat of my brow” to
find the way that God supernaturally loves others and how he “looks onto the
multitudes with compassion”.