My next-door neighbour is always pottering around his garden. Clipping, hoeing, digging, watering, pruning and planting.
Recently I met someone who has known him for 40 years who was amazed to discover this. He said, “I didn't know he was a grower, I always had him down as a consumer!”
The phrase stuck with me and I wondered which one people would think I was.
I want to be known as a grower!
At the beginning of the Bible we see God walking in the cool of the day with Adam in the garden of Eden. At the end of the Bible we see a picture of a garden city when the new heaven and the new earth meet.
God is a gardener.
He is grower.
It's just what He does and who He is.
Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” (John 15:1). God is a grower. He gives breath and life to everything that exists every moment. Jesus also described himself as a good shepherd who is attentive to the needs of his sheep. (John 10:11) And he asks us to follow his example. Paul urges Timothy to “guard what has been entrusted to him. (1 Timothy 6:20) And the word used here is similar to the alertness of a gardner or shepherd.
God invites us to join him in growing his Kingdom garden.
It’s a living, breathing place. It is growing every day. Let’s nurture, feed, protect, provide shelter and dig deep. Let’s be gardeners in God’s Kingdom.
I love this passage from James 1:19-21 that helps us remember to be careful, attentive gardeners.
“Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.”
