God’s Gardener

GGardeners always talk about how much fun it is to browse through seed catalogs in Winter, to choose new plants and design new beds.

Sometimes, though, I think it’s just work. And I’m not alone. Look back in the beginning of the Bible—Genesis, Chapter 1—and you’ll find God himself starting work on His plant choices. In fact, as soon as He created dry ground, the very first thing He wanted to do was to plant something on it. “Let the land produce vegetation,” He’s quoted as saying, “seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seeds in it, according to their various kinds.”

I can see Him now, turning the pages of those heavenly garden catalogs. “Let’s see, I’ll put a little purple horn-tooth moss over there and some scouring rush in that open area and edge its border with some resurrection fern—I’ve always liked that name. Pretty dry and hot right there, looks like cactus country to me. That’s alright, I’ve got lots of those. Whoops, I need to put these cottonwoods somewhere. And I can’t leave the breadfruit out. And look, here’s some nice mistletoe, and ginger, and toadflax, and spiny hop sage, and shepherd’s purse, and sweet alyssum, and kohlrabi, and hydrangea, and meadow rose, and tornillo screwbean, and Scotch broom, and wild indigo, and Carolina crane’s-bill, and prickly ash, and snow-on-the-mountain, and …”

It all sounds a bit overwhelming to me. But did God himself find plant planning to be a lot of work? I’ll tell you three reasons why I think He did.

1. Towards the end of the job, He had so many plants He still wanted to grow that, like many a mortal gardener, He decided to throw them all together in whatever room He had left. That’s how we got rainforests.
2. Soon as He finished choosing His plants, He called it a day. You can look it up.
3. And this is the clincher. After making all those horticultural choices, God decided He sure as heck wasn’t going to try to take care of them all. No sir, He got Himself a gardener to do that job. It says so in Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”

So not only did God realize gardening’s a lot of work, He was smart enough to get somebody else to do the work for Him.

But, you know, all that shows something else, too. According to the Old Testament Bible, God didn’t hire us to be computer programmers, congressional lobbyists, used-car sales people, or even (oops) magazine editors. Nope, our job was to be gardeners, to work and take care of this place we all share and live in.

Hmmm. I better get back to finishing up my seed order. ❖