How Gardening Can Bless Your Community and Reflect the New Eden | Lydia Edmonds

The Peg and the Pen: "Penning words in order to shape culture and to train women to hammer with a peg the tyrants that the Lord has placed in their path of obedience."

A version of this article originally appeared in Issue Three of the KTC magazine

How Gardening Can Bless Your Community and Reflect the New Eden

By Lydia Edmonds

I was once asked what would be something that I would recommend that every woman try at least once. My answer was grow a garden, but more specifically grow flowers. There is

something truly captivating about putting a little seed into the soil and watching it spring up and

grow into something so wonderfully beautiful. Gardening is like an old friend that is always

beckoning me to return again to discover another piece to the amazing puzzle that is God’s

creation. To be able to take part in such rich beauty as a gift from the definition of beauty Himself is truly amazing; and yet, beauty and truth is something that our culture cannot seem to find. There is a never ending quest for answers, for purpose, for goodness in the midst of evil. But because our culture avoids God like the plague, we “feel” lost; we are longing to see the beauty and meaning in our lives but we turn to the wrong things. Our longing is misplaced; it stops short, and we end up worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. (Romans 1:25) As Lewis says in “The Weight of Glory,” “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.” The questions then become where can these answers be found, what is entailed in our holiday at sea, and how in the world does any of this relate to gardening? The answer to all of those questions come to us by way of two gardens.       

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) I assume that most of you have probably heard the creation narrative many times in your life, but have you ever stopped to consider the grandeur and beauty of it all? God, Who has always been and Who always will be, created out of nothing the universe. He spoke and there was; He spoke and there was spectacular beauty and order and truly sublime architectural design. He spoke and the roaring seas were, the clouds were formed, the trees were planted, the mountains were formed, the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds lived and took flight, and all of the flowers with their ambrosial scents beautified the scene. And to all of this God added the most magnificent garden with every tree that was “pleasant to the sight and good for food.” (Genesis 2:9) All of this, God gave to mankind, whom He created in His image out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) to work and to keep (Genesis 2:15). Think about that, God masterfully created and designed everything in the universe and then gave to mankind the glorious task of caring for His creation. Adam and Eve, and all of the subsequent generations, were given the task of having dominion over all of creation; and not only that but they were given the opportunity to be fruitful as God is fruitful, to create as God created, and to recreate the glorious Eden all over the earth (Genesis 1:26-28). 

But man sinned by disobeying God, and a curse was placed upon the earth (Genesis 3:17-19) Death and disease would now be a stain to the glorious picture of creation, and children would be brought forth in pain, and worst of all, man’s relationship with God changed. Where man could walk with God before (Genesis 3:8), sin caused a separation in the relationship both on earth and for eternity, meaning that man would justly go to Hell when he died and be separated from God forever. But God, in the midst of man’s disobedience, offered grace. Grace that traces through each book of Scripture. Grace that is ever abundant and overflowing. Grace that came in the form of His only begotten Son (Genesis 3:15). Jesus came to earth and lived the life that the first Adam (nor any of us) could, and died the death that we all DESERVE. He gave up His life, having fulfilled all of the prophecies concerning His life on earth, and rose again on the third day having taken the keys of death and Hades (Revelation 1:17-18). This Jesus is the Gospel that we are called to proclaim to ALL the earth in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), which is an expansion of the Dominion Mandate from Genesis. 

This is the beautiful truth that our culture far too often misses—Jesus. Jesus is truth, Jesus is beauty, and in Him we have life forevermore. This is our holiday at sea—eternal life, salvation from sin and death, and infinite joy. So, how does any of this relate to gardening? Because our King conquered. Death had no hold on Him, and He now has dominion over everything that would harm us (Romans 6:9). The Dragon Slayer came and conquered, and ALL His enemies will be put under His feet; and with every seed that you put into the ground you are proclaiming the truth of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. We are proclaiming that through death came life everlasting and that although we still live with the consequences of sin it shall not always be so. “The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” (Isaiah 11:9) and the creation that was subjected to futility will be delivered (Romans

8:20-21), because Jesus will utterly fulfill the dominion mandate, and His dominion will be from

sea to sea (Psalm 72:8). In gardening we also participate in creating a shadow of the new Eden

that we will experience when the heavens and the earth are made new. In the new Eden we shall dwell for all eternity with light Himself, with beauty Himself, with the resurrected fully God

fully man Savior, and it will be glorious.

Now, I want to be completely clear that I am not an advocate for naturalism. Nature does NOT make us closer to God. Nature is a gift from God; nature is His handiwork given to us to nurture. Nature is a picture, but it is a picture that should point us to God. And when we take the gift of creation and glorify it and multiply it, we have the great opportunity to not only obey the dominion mandate but we also show the lost and dying world biblical beauty. In the words of Lewis, “Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life.” When I present someone with an arrangement, I am presenting them with an invitation to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. I am presenting them with a picture of the Gospel. A plant has life because there was first death. Similarly, we as Christians have life through the death of Christ. This is why I truly believe that Christians should have the most beautiful landscaping. If you are a Christian, your house and your yard, the areas that you have been given to have dominion over, need to scream to the onlooking world that there is abundant life there. Why? Because if you are indeed a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells in you and that DOES mean that you have been given abundant life, and every area of your life needs to reflect that. Show your neighbors, friends, and family the wonder of God’s creation. Show them that although there is pain and suffering and death in this world, our King conquered and death does not have the final say. Proclaim to them that Jesus, the second gardener (John 20:15), did what Adam, the first gardener failed to do. Proclaim that the borrowed tomb in the garden became an empty tomb and our Lord owns this world. Show them that as the lilies multiply year after year, so God’s kingdom grows. Show them the shadows behind the substance and in doing so, you also will find in yourself as Lewis says “a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy.” That desire is a desire for that which we will not experience until we reach heaven. “I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.” (Mere Christianity) We WERE made for another world; but even though that is the case, we are NOT to completely abandon the world we are currently living in. We are called to take part in transforming this world from one degree of glory to the next through dominion. We are called to press on towards the Celestial City while also caring for the world around us all the while remembering that God gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6-7) Therefore, press on towards the goal, take dominion, but whilst you do so, show the world true beauty. Invite them to see with their own eyes a taste of the goodness and beauty of Christ. And if all this beauty is but a taste, what must heaven be like?

Therefore, I ask what taste are you offering to those around you? Does your home proclaim to your family, friends, and neighbors that you serve a conquering King? It will be difficult; there will be challenges, and it may seem as if the reward of your labor is never going to come, but just as the growth in our spiritual lives takes time, so it is with dominion in the physical world. It will require removing weeds, and some backbreaking labor, but all of that will only refine you. Pray! Ask the Lord to bless your efforts and be patient. Delight in the good gifts God has given us to enjoy, and be prepared to stand in awe of the God Who creates and sustains all of the beauty that we see.